Patrick Quirke’s conviction for the 2011 murder of Bobby Ryan, a DJ known as Mr Moonlight, has been affirmed by the Supreme Court.
The seven-judge court unanimously decided to dismiss the appeal, rejecting the Tipperary farmer’s application for a retrial after finding a mistake in the warrant application for a search of Quirke’s home was “due to honest inadvertence”.
The dismissal comes some months after the court ruled that a computer seized from Quirke’s home was unlawfully searched. The judges went on to hear further submissions in May from lawyers for Quirke and the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) on the effects of this finding.
Giving judgment for the court on Friday, Mr Justice Peter Charleton said the admission of the computer evidence by the trial judge can and should be affirmed since the illegality attached was “due expressly” to a new legal development related to digital-space privacy.
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The trial judge found “no dishonesty” on the part of the gardaí, who “followed the law as it appeared to be at the time of the search,” the judge said.
Quirke (53) had argued that a new trial court, rather than the Supreme Court, should determine whether the evidence should be admitted or excluded at a retrial.
However, Mr Justice Charleton found there was sufficient information before the appellate court, which found a breach of Quirke’s rights, to know that the trial judge would have found this breach to be inadvertent if she had conducted an admissibility inquiry.
The murder conviction should be affirmed, he said.
Quirke’s trial was told the computer was used for internet searches on the rate of decomposition of human remains and the limitations of forensic DNA.
In what was perceived as a substantial win for Quirke in his quest to have his 2019 murder conviction quashed, the Supreme Court ruled in March that gardaí had unlawfully searched the computer’s contents.
The court ruled that a physical analysis of a digital device was permitted but its use as a “portal into the digital world” was a more significant intrusion into privacy rights and such an intention should have been raised in the warrant application so the digital search could be judicially authorised.
Quirke pleaded not guilty to Mr Ryan’s murder but was convicted, by a 10:2 jury verdict, following a 13-week trial.
The prosecution argued that circumstantial evidence established he had murdered Mr Ryan, his alleged love rival.
The remains of Mr Ryan were discovered in a disused run-off tank on a farm owned by his girlfriend Mary Lowry and leased by Quirke at Fawnagown in April 2013.
He had gone missing nearly two years earlier, on June 3rd, 2011, after leaving Ms Lowry’s house.
The Court of Appeal dismissed all grounds of Quirke’s appeal, but the Supreme Court agreed to hear a further appeal due to the importance of the issues raised.
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