A BID by a Meath man to have his 40-year-old conviction for manslaughter quashed, opened at the Court of Criminal Appeal yesterday.
Martin Conmey (59) of Porterstown Lane, near Ratoath, Co Meath is claiming that “newly discovered facts” will prove he was not responsible for the death of Una Lynskey in 1971.
Conmey’s application, brought under Section 2 of the Criminal Procedure Act 1993, is part of his attempt to have his conviction declared a miscarriage of justice
In 1972, he and another man, Dick Donnelly, were convicted of the 19-year-old’s manslaughter. A year later, both men appealed and Donnelly’s conviction was overturned, but Martin Conmey served three years in prison for the offence. A third man, Martin Kerrigan, was also suspected of having been involved in the crime, but he was abducted and killed a short time after the body of Ms Lynskey was discovered.
Lawyers for Martin Conmey yesterday told the court that their client always maintained his innocence.
Hugh Hartnett SC, for Conmey, said there were “newly discovered facts” in his client’s case, including the existence of “earlier” contradictory statements from key witnesses and a previously unknown allegation of violence and “oppression” by gardaí against one of these.
Una Lynskey vanished while returning home from work on the evening of October 12th, 1971. Her journey from the bus stop to her family home at Porterstown Lane in Meath, should have taken 15 minutes by foot but the young woman never returned home.
Her body was discovered in a ditch in a remote part of the Dublin mountains two months later. A postmortem examination on the civil servant’s body failed to reveal exactly how she died. She had no broken bones and there were no signs she was strangled.
Counsel for Conmey said the time from 6.55pm to 7.10pm on the evening of Ms Lynskeys disappearance was “crucial” to the Garda investigation.
Mr Hartnett said the existence of earlier statements from people called as witnesses as to what they say they saw at about that time on October 12th, 1971 amounted to “a newly-discovered fact”. He said these were not made available to defence lawyers at the time of the trial 38 years ago. The court heard how a series of statements were taken from local men Martin Madden and Seán Reilly, which proved to be “keystones” for the convictions of Martin Conmey and Dick Donnelly.
The court was also told there was a series of statements from Martin Madden, now deceased, which were inconsistent. In his initial statement, there was no mention of having seen a car at about 7pm on the evening in question. In a later statement, there was “an express mention” of seeing Mr Donnelly’s “copper coloured car” pass by between 7.05pm and 7.10pm. He also claimed to have seen who he thought was Martin Kerrigan in the passenger seat.
During the trial a successful application was brought to have Martin Madden treated as a hostile witness after he “directly contradicted” what he said in the later sworn statement.
The court also heard there was an inconsistency in earlier statements of another witness, Seán Reilly. Mr Reilly alleges he was kept at a Garda station for “five hours” and was subjected to “abuse and assault” prior to his making of the later statement.
Mr Hartnett said his client’s conviction for manslaughter had deeply affected him, and resulted in him suffering depression for many years.
The hearing continues.