O'Reilly to appeal conviction
Appeal: Joe O'Reilly believes he can win on technical grounds
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It is expected the case to be lodged before the Court of Criminal Appeal will be fought purely on the circumstantial nature of the prosecution evidence.
O’Reilly has two weeks to lodge an appeal against the trial judge’s decision to refuse him leave to appeal.
Though Mr Justice Barry White had refused leave to appeal, O’Reilly’s defence lawyers have a fortnight from today to appeal against this ruling in the Court of Criminal Appeal.
If the appeal goes ahead, it is expected that a date for the appeal would be set before Christmas or early in 2008, legal sources said today.
That means that the judge would re-examine the evidence in the trial which gripped the nation but much of the appeal would probably concentrate on legal argument and submissions.
One of the planks of such an appeal is expected to be the amount of publicity generated about the case before it went to trial.
His lawyers are likely to argue the massive media exposure was prejudicial to his chances of a fair trial.
The trial judge said the case had attracted more media attention that any case he had ever been involved in.
The technical evidence which played a crucial part in the circumstantial evidence which led to his conviction, is also likely to come under scrutiny.
The appeal would not mean a re-run of witnesses and evidence heard during the four week trial.
It would mainly consist of detailed legal submissions by barristers for Joe O’Reilly and for the State. Mobile phone data, which helped convince the jury that Joe O’Reilly murdered his wife, was the subject of detailed legal argument during his trial in the Central Criminal Court.
There were four days of legal argument in the absence of the jury during the trial. Judge White refused to admit the“reconstructions” of the crime Joe O’Reilly carried out for Rachel’s family and friends.
But he did rule that O’Reilly’s mobile phone records had been legally obtained and deemed them admissable. In the end, the mobile phone records which showed he was near the murder scene at the time of the murder, proved his undoing.
They allowed the prosecutor, Mr Denis Vaughan-Buckley, to place Joe O’Reilly in the vicinity of his home on the day he murdered his wife.
The use of mobile phone records ushered in a new era of criminal trials which demonstrated how important such highly technical evidence has become for the State.
They helped convict Joe O’Reilly of a crime which he had steadfastly denied throughout his trial and during Garda questioning.
Appeal lawyers will not have to scrutinise trial transcripts.
