A man who was jailed for life for the double murder of two Chinese students has lost an attempt to bring a further appeal against his conviction to the Supreme Court.
The three-judge Court of Criminal Appeal yesterday refused an application by Yu Jie to certify points of law in his case as being of such exceptional public importance that they required to be determined by the Supreme Court. The appeal court said it could not see any basis for an appeal to the Supreme Court.
Yu Jie (27) was jailed for life in 2003 after a jury in the Central Criminal Court convicted him of the double murder of his friends in Dublin in March 2001.
He had denied the murder of Yue Feng and Liu Qing, both aged 19, in an apartment at Blackhall Square, Dublin, between March 12th and March 14th, 2001.
The trial lasted 60 days and was the longest jury trial in Irish legal history.
The trial was told Yu Jie strangled Yue Feng on March 12th, 2001, left the apartment and returned later to wait for Liu Qing. When she came home, he strangled her, too.
He returned the next day and again on March 14th, when he doused their bodies with petrol and set fire to them.