A man has lost his High Court challenge brought over his conviction over a robbery in which the victim was pulled into a basement flat from a street and pinned to a wall by a group of six or seven people.
The victim’s watch, ring, his phone and €750 in cash were taken in the incident which happened late on August 5th, 2013, on Dublin’s North Circular Road.
Boby Bogdan (21) was among a group of Romanian people in the flat identified by the victim when gardaí arrived shortly afterwards, the High Court was told.
The victim, a man from Northern Ireland, was grabbed by one man and pulled into the basement flat by two men as four or five other men and women came running towards them. He was pinned against the wall and his property taken.
When one of the robbers was unable to get the phone to work, the victim said he would show him how it worked and at that point managed to run across the street where he rang the Garda.
Gardaí went into the flat and asked all the men to go outside. The victim was sure Bogdan was one of them and gardaí searched him, finding the watch and ring on him.
Bogdan, who lived in the North Circular Road flat, was fined €350 after the District Court heard he had no previous convictions. He denied in court he was involved, suggested the victim had mistaken him for someone else, and denied gardaí found anything in his pockets.
His lawyers had argued the identification of Bogdan was entirely insufficient for the “beyond reasonable doubt” standard of criminal proof. The District Court judge rejected the argument and convicted him.
His lawyers then asked the High Court to quash the conviction. They argued there was an unlawful incursion into Bogdan’s dwelling, an unlawful search of the accused and dubious identification.
Ms Justice Iseult O’Malley rejected the arguments. She said the conviction was self-explanatory and the evidence that property was found on Bogdan had not been challenged in the District Court.
Bogdan had given evidence and the district court judge was entitled to disbelieve it and draw such inferences as seemed appropriate “as to the reasons for any lie told”, the judge said.