Graham Dwyer has lost his last ditch attempt to overturn his conviction for the murder of care worker Elaine O’Hara.
A Supreme Court ruling which dismissed his final appeal means it is the end of the legal road in Ireland for the killer who has already spent nine years behind bars.
He has always denied the murder of 36-year-old Ms O’Hara, who was last seen in August 2012 in a park in Shanganagh, south Dublin. Some of her remains were found in the Dublin mountains just over a year later, and she was identified from dental records.
Members of Elaine’s family, including her father Frank and sister Anne Charles, were in the Four Courts to hear the ruling of the court.
Seven judges in the highest court in the land on Wednesday ruled to dismiss the appeal.
Mr Justice Maurice Collins gave the judgement of the court.
In the last few years, Dwyer has brought his case to several courts, including the High Court, Court of Appeal and Europe in his bid to secure his release from prison since being jailed for life in 2015.
Mobile phone data had helped to tie Dwyer to Ms O'Hara's murder, linking him to a phone used to send messages to her, and to certain locations.
Dwyer’s trial was told a Nokia phone found in Vartry Reservoir in Co Wicklow in 2013 was used to send Ms O’Hara messages, including one about stabbing, culminating in a text dated August 22nd, 2012, the last day she was seen, to “go down to the shore and wait”.
The prosecution argued that phone, and another phone found in the reservoir, were secret ‘Master’ and ‘Slave’ phones Dwyer and O’Hara used almost exclusively to contact each other.
Following his conviction, Dwyer, in long-running civil proceedings, brought his case before a number of courts including the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) where he successfully challenged the validity of section of the legislation which permitted phone metadata to be retained “on a general and indiscriminate basis”.
In April 2022, the CJEU found Ireland’s data-retention regime breached EU law.
But in March of last year, the Court of Appeal here dismissed Dwyer’s earlier appeal against his conviction and said the metadata evidence, which it described as “not very significant”, was admissible. Even if excluded, there was enough evidence to link Dwyer to the two phones that formed part of the prosecution case, it held.
Dwyer then secured a further appeal before the seven-judge Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court decided to allow a final appeal on the grounds that "significant issues of general public importance" arose about the admissibility of mobile phone data evidence retained and accessed under legislation that was later found to breach EU law.
High Court Reporters
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