Judgment reserved in appeal by man jailed for neighbour’s murder

The Court of Appeal has reserved judgment in the case of a man jailed for life for murdering his neighbour outside his home.

Richard Higgins (45), of New Houses, Lattin, Co Tipperary, had pleaded not guilty at a Limerick sitting of the Central Criminal Court to the murder of Seán Murphy (29) on January 17th, 2010.

Higgins was found guilty by a jury and given the mandatory life sentence by Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy on July 28th, 2011. The jury also found him guilty of two counts of threatening to kill the deceased and his partner.

Moving an appeal against conviction in the Court of Appeal, counsel for Higgins, Michael Bowman SC, said his client's conviction was unsafe and unsatisfactory.

Mr Bowman said the jury was incorrectly informed that Higgins had told another man leading up to the incident that “what’s going to kill me is there’s somebody else who’s going to give him a few slaps and I’m not going to get any satisfaction out of that”.

Having accepted the wording presented by the prosecution, the court had regarded it as highly relevant to Higgins’s alleged intention to harm Mr Murphy.

However, Mr Bowman said that Higgins had actually told the man “what would kill me . . .”, which put the sentence into the conditional tense and which was materially different to the transcript presented to the jury.

When the actual wording of the audio recording was recovered, it subsequently turned to a question of damage limitation for the defence, Mr Bowman said.

Indictment questioned

Mr Bowman further submitted that counts of threatening to kill the deceased and his partner should not have been included on the indictment. He said the counts were never the subject of a garda investigation.

Counsel said that while there was no doubt that gardaí were called to his house on the nights in question, there was no suggestion Higgins was ever going to be prosecuted as a result of threats made.

Counsel for the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Pauline Walley SC, accepted that the transcript was incorrect but said the defence could have had the tape examined.

Ms Walley said Higgins had uttered threats to assault the deceased on a number of occasions.

Ms Walley added that she was not sure “there’s a realm of difference between ‘what’s going . . .’ and ‘what would . . .’”

President of the Court of Appeal Mr Justice Seán Ryan, who sat with Mr Justice Garrett Sheehan and Mr Justice George Birmingham, said the court would give judgment as soon as possible.