A MAN WHO was jailed for life for the murder of a 28-year-old man in Limerick has lost his appeal over that conviction this morning at the Supreme Court.
30-year-old Barry Doyle was first convicted of the 2008 murder of Shane Geoghegan on 16 February 2012.
That initial trial heard that Doyle had admitted during Garda interviews that he shot Geoghegan in a case of mistaken identity.
Geoghegan was gunned down just yards from his home in Dooradoyle, Limerick in the early hours of the 9 November 2008.
It subsequently emerged that a man known as John ‘Pitchfork’ McNamara had been the intended target of Barry Doyle, who was taking orders from known criminal John Dundon.
After his conviction Doyle took his case to the Court of Appeal which dismissed the case on 8 June 2015, while also giving Doyle leave to appeal his conviction to the Supreme Court.
While his appeal to the Court of Appeal had been based on 27 issues of contention concerning his 2012 trial, Doyle’s Supreme Court Appeal was primarily based on the fact he had no solicitor present prior to or during his 15th interview with gardaí during the initial investigation.
It was during that interview that it was alleged Doyle made his admissions concerning the death of Shane Geoghegan.
Other issues raised by Doyle included the fact that a Supreme Court decision on which he would have sought to rely, DPP v Damache, was delivered eight days after his own conviction, and whether or not some of the “facts not considered to be in dispute” regarding the case could have constituted threats or inducements targeting him.
Regarding the ‘presence of a solicitor’ issue, a majority of six of the Court’s nine judges ruled that, in the circumstances of the case, it was not required that Doyle have a solicitor present during the key 15th interview.
Similarly, the Court held that the cited Damache case could not be used by Doyle in his defence, and also dismissed the issue of threats or inducements regarding the facts not considered to be in dispute in the case.
Doyle has been returned to prison where he will continue to serve out the remainder of his life sentence.
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