Phone records central to the conviction of Brian Meehan for the murder of journalist Veronica Guein should not have been accepted as evidence, the Court of Criminal Appeal heard today.
Brian Meehan (41), of Crumlin, Dublin, was in court today to hear his lawyers try to overturn his conviction for the shooting of the Sunday Independentcrime reporter, just a day after the tenth anniversary of her murder on the Naas dual carriageway, on June 26th, 1996.
Meehan's lawyers also questioned the quality of witness evidence used to secure his conviction. He was found guilty of riding the motorcycle on which a gunman riding pillion shot six shots into Ms Guerin in July 1999.
He was and also given concurrent jail sentence of 20, 12 10 and 5 years for drugs and firearms offences.
Meehan is the only person convicted in relation to the murder which sent shockwaves throughout the State and prompted a major crime crackdown.
Meehan's counsel Mr Patrick Gageby SC today told the Court that he would be challenging the evidence of Russell Warren - who is in the Witness Protection Programme.
"The link between the murder and my client rests solely on Russell Warren," he said.
He said 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 Warrens' evidence.
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 has triggered the court's belief as to Warrens's credit and his 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 anywhere and did not give the content of the calls.
Mr Conor Devally SC, also for Meehan, the phone evidence should not have been accepted because the court had no basis for satisfying itself that the human input aspect of the telephone records had been correctly performed.
Addressing the court on the convictions for the drugs and firearms offences, Mr Devally submitted that the trial court had erred by accepting the evidence of Charles Bowden, an accomplice, in relation to these offences but not accepting Bowden's evidence which implicated Meehan in the scheme to murder Ms Guerin.
Mr Devally also submitted that a piece of paper found at a unit at the Greenmount Industrial Estate in Harold's Cross used by the drugs gang and on which Meehan's fingerprint was found was not enough evidence to corroborate him as being guilty of firearms offences.
He said he accepted that the piece of paper connected his client to the premises at Greenmount but that the only other evidence connecting him to the drugs offences was that of John Dunne who was an accomplice in the gang and was "up to his neck" in its activities.
Peter Charleton SC, for the DPP, submitted that the Court 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.
He said 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 that morning.
He said that was confirmation of Warren's evidence which implicated Meehan in the murder.
The hearing before the three-judge Court of Criminal Appeal continues tomorrow and is expected to last three days.