Court quashes rape conviction of Laois brothers

The Court of Criminal Appeal has quashed the convictions of two Laois brothers for raping a woman in a hotel room after hearing new evidence from a key prosecution witness.

Presiding judge Mr Justice John MacMenamin yesterday said the appeal court had taken the view that the convictions of Eamonn Flanagan (42) of Dunamaise, Stradbally and Seamus Flanagan (35) of Ashley Gardens, Portlaoise, were unsafe.

The brothers were jailed for three years by Mr Justice Garrett Sheehan in October 2011 after a Central Criminal Court jury convicted them of raping a woman at the Red Cow Hotel in Dublin on March 3rd, 2008.

Seamus Flanagan had pleaded not guilty to the anal and vaginal rape of the woman at the hotel, while Eamonn Flanagan pleaded not guilty to vaginal rape of the woman.

Counsel for the Director of Public Prosecutions, Mr Paul Coffey SC, told the court that his instructions were not to seek a retrial.

Prosecution witness

The appeal court heard that after the brothers were convicted, a key prosecution witness claimed he was pressurised by gardaí to say he saw the two men at the door of the hotel room where the alleged rape occurred.

The witness, Daniel Lynch, was a friend of the accused men and had consensual sex with the woman shortly before the brothers were accused of raping her. No DNA from the brothers was found on the woman.

The court heard that the gardaí involved “categorically deny” putting Mr Lynch under any pressure.

Mr Justice MacMenamin said the court would deliver the written reasons for its judgement in the “fullness of time”. He said the court wished to emphasise that the evidence heard at the appeal would have “rendered it extremely difficult” for any prosecution in a retrial, and the court therefore believed the DPP’s decision was an “entirely appropriate” one.

Mr Lynch told counsel for the State, Mr Coffey, that in May of this year he gave an affidavit concerning two statements he made to gardaí during the investigation.

In his first statement, made at Newbridge Garda Station in March 2008, Mr Lynch told detectives that on the night of the alleged offence he left the room and just down from the door he met the two accused men and talked to them.

He agreed that on April 30th, 2008 he gave a second statement to gardaí in the back of a Garda car stopped in the forecourt of a garage on the Dublin Road in Portlaoise.

In this statement Mr Lynch said that as he left through the open door of the hotel room, the two accused men were coming through it.

Emotional pressure

In the affidavit Mr Lynch claimed that in the rear of the vehicle he was placed under “considerable emotional and psychological pressure” to alter his first statement.

The witness alleged he was told that he would be imprisoned for seven years if he did not “clarify matters” and alleged he was accused of attempting to “cover up” for his friends.

In the affidavit Mr Lynch says that he was concerned due to his high level of intoxication on the night of the alleged offence.

He claimed his account of having met the two accused men is incorrect and he felt “unfairly pressurised” not to express this doubt.

Det Garda Keith Marron said he was “outraged” by the suggestion that gardaí had done this to him in order to coerce him in to making a statement.