A Nigerian man who claimed that the jury which found him guilty of the rape of a Limerick woman was racially prejudiced against him has lost his appeal against conviction.
Emmanuel Ashibougwu (26), The Square, Annacotty, Limerick, was jailed for nine years by Mr Justice Paul Carney at the Central Criminal Court last January after he was convicted of raping the 20-year-old woman in the early hours of the morning of December 27th, 2004, at a car park in the Punches Cross area.
He had pleaded not guilty to the rape charge and claimed in evidence that he and the woman had had consensual sex. The trial heard the woman had left an apartment in tears after a row, and was making her way home when she was approached by Ashibougwu, who the jury found, forced the woman to have sex.
When jailing Ashibougwu on the rape charge, Mr Justice Carney was told Ashibougwu had been convicted at Limerick Circuit Criminal Court on February 20th, 2006, for having heroin worth €500,000 on O'Connell Avenue in the city on August 18th, 2005. He is serving a seven-year sentence on that charge. Moving his appeal against the rape conviction yesterday, Isobel Kennedy SC argued that Ashibougwu did not get a fair trial and that the jury's verdict was "perverse" and against the weight of the evidence. The only way the jury could have arrived at the guilty verdict was due to racial prejudice.
In other jurisdictions such as the UK, the trial judge can give a warning to the jury in relation to racial prejudice, counsel said. It was accepted that in this case no such application was made by the defence to the judge, she added. Opposing the appeal, Justin Dillon SC, for the DPP, said there was "a clear case" to go to the jury and no evidence that the jury was racially biased against the defendant.
If the evidence against the accused was as hopeless as contended, then an application by the defence to remedy the situation should have been made to the trial judge, counsel said. None was made.
The three judge court, with Mr Justice Nial Fennelly, presiding, and sitting with Mr Justice Paul Gilligan and Mr Justice Michael Hanna, rejected Ashibougwo's appeal.