A 23-year-old man who fatally stabbed an acquaintance hours after searching online for “prison sentence for murder in Ireland” has argued that evidence of his activity on Tinder minutes before the killing, and “sinister” messages he sent to another man demanding money, should not have been admitted at his trial.
Brandon Gavin’s legal team contended the material had the potential to cast Gavin in an “unfavourable light” and was prejudicial, suggesting a propensity to commit a criminal act other than the one before the court.
The State, however, argued the messages were relevant and probative to counter the “outlandish proposition” put forward by the appellant – that he was acting in self-defence when he stabbed 19-year-old Marius Mamaliga in the neck.
Gavin, of Brookdale Road, Rivervalley, Swords, had pleaded not guilty to the murder of Mamaliga (19) at Forest Court, Swords, on the evening of February 23rd, 2023, but was convicted by a Central Criminal Court jury in November 2024. He was sentenced to the mandatory term of life imprisonment by Judge Eileen Creedon the following month.
READ MORE
The trial heard that Gavin owed money for drugs. Mamaliga was demanding payment, warning Gavin by text that there would be “people at your door tomorrow” and that the men he owed money to were “not to be messed with”.
Mamaliga was sitting in the driver’s seat of his car with two friends when Gavin got into the rear passenger side, reached across into the front seat and stabbed him once in the neck with a knife before fleeing on foot. Mamaliga was brought to hospital in a critical condition but died three days later.
Gavin had been messaging women on Tinder minutes before he stabbed Mamaliga, and on the day before the attack his phone had been used to search for “prison sentence for murder in Ireland”.
The defendant told gardaí Mamaliga “came at” him so he defended himself, claiming he feared for his life, as he owed a drug debt of €2,500.
However, the jury unanimously agreed with the prosecution case that Gavin’s claim he had acted in his own defence was “self-serving nonsense”.
Before the appeal got under way, Ronan Kennedy, counsel for the Director of Public Prosecutions, told the three-judge appeal panel that Mamaliga’s parents were present for the hearing and noted that yesterday, February 23rd, was the anniversary of the fatal incident.
Launching an appeal against Gavin’s conviction on Tuesday, his counsel, Dean Kelly, argued the trial judge was wrong to admit evidence of calls and texts between Gavin and another man on February 22nd and February 23rd, the day of the stabbing.
He argued that Gavin’s activity on Tinder and his interaction with a woman on the app between 11.37am and 6.47pm on the day of the killing should not have gone before the jury.
Kelly said the material had the potential to cast Gavin “in an unfavourable light”, and suggested Gavin was “oppressive” in dealing with another man not related to the case.
Counsel suggested this was evidence of misconduct and was not admissible, but had found its way into the case, and implied that the appellant was a person who, by way of his disposition, was likely to have committed the offences charged.
He said there was “something of the night” and “something sinister” about the words used by Gavin in texts to the other man not involved in the case. He said the same comment could be made about the texts sent from Mamaliga to the appellant. He noted Mamaliga had texted Gavin saying: “These boys aren’t to be messed with” and there would be “people at your door tomorrow”.
Kelly said the prosecution had contended that the defence had painted a picture of Gavin as a vulnerable drug user.
There was never a suggestion made to any witness that Gavin was “preyed upon” by Mamaliga, Kelly said, adding the suggestion that the appellant was “some vulnerable person” in the “dark presence” of the deceased was “never the defence case”.
He said this proposition was “a highly emotionalised straw man” which had been “carefully curated” by the prosecution and put before the court, but was “utterly ungrounded”.
Counsel said the defence case was that Gavin “spiralled” because he owed Mamaliga money, and stabbed him in self-defence after the deceased lurched towards the defendant in a threatening way.
In relation to the evidence admitted that Gavin had been messaging a woman on Tinder minutes before the fatal interaction, Kelly described the suggestion that “scrolling” on one’s phone was indicative of “a calm state of mind” or of cold-bloodedness as “rubbish”.
In response, Kennedy, for the DPP, said the messages showed Gavin’s state of mind in the lead up to and at the time of the killing, and countered the proposition put forward by the appellant that he was acting in self-defence.
Kennedy said he had made clear in his closing address that this was a “planned, controlled, premeditated” killing for the purposes of eliminating a drug debt.
He said Gavin had spent the day looking for money from another man, went to meet Mamaliga with “a knife secreted in his satchel”, just minutes before the killing interacted with Tinder, and texted his father asking for €50.
He said the evidence showed there had been no conversation between Mamaliga and Gavin when he got into the car. The deceased was facing forward when he was stabbed, counsel said, and had no opportunity to defend himself. The appellant then fled the scene and took a circuitous route home in order to dispose of the knife.
Kennedy said the defence case was that Gavin was a man with significant mental health difficulties who was so terrified that he felt he had no option but to “plunge a knife into Mr Mamaliga’s exposed neck, hitting his jugular vein”.
He said there had been a “blatant and unambiguous” attempt to paint the deceased as a “sophisticated drug dealer” and as “the aggressor” who had brought two people with him for the purposes of confronting Gavin.
Kennedy said the three-judge court would reserve judgment.
