Brian Meehan, the only person serving a sentence for the murder of journalist Veronica Guerin, yesterday began his appeal against his conviction.
The appeal opened just a day after the 10th anniversary of the gunning down of the crime reporter on the Naas Road in 1996.
Meehan (41), from Crumlin in Dublin, was convicted in 1999 of the murder of Ms Guerin on June 26th, 1996.
He was jailed for life by the non-jury Special Criminal Court in July 1999 and also given concurrent jail sentences of 20, 12, 10 and five years for drugs and firearms offences.
The court found after a 31-day trial that Meehan was the driver of the motorbike from which a gunman fired six shots into Ms Guerin's body as she sat in her car stopped at traffic lights on the Naas Road.
Meehan's counsel, Patrick Gageby SC, told the Court of Criminal Appeal that he would be challenging the evidence of Russell Warren, who is in the witness protection programme and whose evidence led to Meehan's conviction for murder. "The link between the murder and my client rests solely on Russell Warren," he said.
He said that the Special Criminal Court had erred in both law and fact in accepting evidence of traffic between Warren and Meehan's mobile phones as corroboration of Warren's evidence.
Mr Gageby said that between the first day of the trial and the last day of the trial, there was "an abundance of evidence laid before the court". He said there was no doubt that the telephone traffic evidence was the "trigger" which allowed the Special Criminal Court to accept it as corroboration of the evidence of Russell Warren, who was an accomplice.
Mr Gageby said that Warren's core case was that Brian Meehan was a complicit party in a joint act that matured into being a proxy to the plot to kill Ms Guerin. He said that Warren's evidence was that he was in Naas on the morning of the murder, had followed Ms Guerin's car, had been in contact with Meehan and had himself witnessed the pillion passenger on the motorbike being driven by Meehan shoot Ms Guerin.
He said that the telephone traffic evidence had triggered the court's belief as to Warren's reliability and to his account of the planning of the murder.
Mr Gageby submitted that the telephone traffic evidence was not legally capable of being corroboration for Warren's account.
He said that the telephone evidence could not corroborate Meehan as being complicit in the murder because it did not place him at the scene and did not give the content of the calls. He said that the telephone evidence had failed to implicate Meehan in the murder of Ms Guerin.
Conor Devally SC, also for Meehan, submitted that the trial court had erred in law by admitting the telephone evidence when it had no basis for doing so. He said the court had no basis for satisfying itself that the human input aspect of the telephone records had been correctly performed.
Peter Charleton SC, for the DPP, submitted that the Court of Criminal Appeal had to concern itself with whether the conviction was "safe and sound" and whether there had been errors in law or fact in relation to the trial. Mr Charleton said the evidence in the case was "bristling with corroboration" in relation to Meehan's involvement in the offences.
Mr Charleton said that the defence at the trial was to the effect there had been no contact at all between Russell Warren and Meehan on the day of the murder, but the telephone records showed that they were in almost obsessive contact with each other on the morning of the murder. He said that was confirmation of Warren's evidence that implicated Meehan in the murder.
The hearing before the three-judge Court of Criminal Appeal continues today.