Teen killer appeals conviction for murdering friend found dead in a field in Louth

A killer serving a life sentence for murdering his teenage friend - whose body was discovered in a field hours after they had been socialising together - has appealed his conviction, arguing the trial judge was “disparaging” and “denigrating” toward the defence’s case.

Lawyers for Aaron Connolly also argued that in his legal directions to the jury, the trial judge had inadvertently engaged in “advocacy for the prosecution”.

Connolly (25) of Willistown, Drumcar had pleaded not guilty to the murder of 18-year-old Cameron Reilly at Shamrock Hill, Dunleer, Co Louth on May 26, 2018 but was found guilty by a unanimous jury verdict in December 2022.

Mr Reilly, a DkIT student, had been part of a group of around 15 young people who gathered in a field on the outskirts of the town on the night of May 25.

Alcohol and cannabis were consumed by some of those present, although Mr Reilly’s best friend told the trial Cameron never took drugs.

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The group went to a local takeaway to get food shortly after midnight.

Mr Reilly’s body was found in the field the following morning by a man out walking his dog.

Chief State Pathologist Dr Linda Mulligan told the trial the teenager’s cause of death was asphyxia due to external pressure on the neck with no other contributing factors.

In his initial statement to gardaí, Connolly said he and Mr Reilly went in different directions at the end of the night and after the pair parted, he “never looked back” to see which way Cameron went.

The jury heard Connolly denied that anything sexual happened between him and Mr Reilly and told gardaí that he was "straight".

However, on the seventh day of the trial, Connolly made admissions through his lawyers that he performed oral sex on Cameron Reilly on the night he was killed.

Connolly claimed that when he left, Mr Reilly was still alive and standing up.

Friends of Mr Reilly gave evidence to the trial that he had confided in them that he was bisexual shortly before his death.

Evidence was also heard from witness Jack Conway, who said he and Aaron Connolly had sexual relations on numerous occasions when they were teenagers. He said Connolly would tell people he was “straight”.

In his garda interviews, Connolly said he could not remember what he was doing during a “missing hour” on the night Cameron Reilly died violently as he had taken a combination of drugs that made him black out.

Connolly told investigating officers he had taken two grams of cocaine and half a gram of MDMA.

At the Court of Appeal yesterday (Tuesday), Michael Bowman SC, representing Connolly, said the trial judge Mr Justice Tony Hunt, had sought to reduce the defence case to the possibility of a “peeping Tom” who had come out of the bushes aroused or angry and killed Mr Reilly.

“That is nothing if not denigrating of the defence case,” he said.

Counsel said a number of concerns arose after the judge’s charge concluded and these concerns were raised by way of requisition but were dismissed by the judge.

Mr Bowman referenced the Supreme Court’s decision in Rattigan which notes: “Reminders to the jury that they are free to disregard a judge’s comments will not necessarily save an otherwise unbalanced and unfair charge”.

He asked the three-judge court to look at the possibility that “a line had been crossed” and amounted to “a deconstruction of the defence closing and thereby of its defence”.

Counsel also suggested the trial judge had been excessively critical of the conduct of the defence in relation to some prosecution witnesses.

He said the judge had raised the issue of “finger pointing” in relation to witness Dean Kenny and had told the jury that no apology had been offered to this witness. Mr Bowman said this had the effect of “disparaging” the defence case.

Mr Bowman also raised the issue of how admissions made by Connolly through his counsel during the trial were dealt with in the judge’s charge.

Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy, sitting with Mr Justice John Edwards and Mr Justice Michael MacGrath, noted that the admissions were made under section 22 of the Criminal Justice Act 1984, which allows an accused person to admit certain parts of the prosecution case, removing the need to call witnesses to prove those aspects. Under the Act, such admissions become "conclusive evidence" of the fact admitted.

The judge said among the admissions in this case were a claim that Mr Reilly was “in good health” when Connolly left him.

However, Mr Justice McCarthy pointed out that no evidence supported this assertion beyond the admission itself, and added that it should never have been presented to the jury.

“You can’t use Section 22 to manufacture facts, which is essentially what happened,” Mr Justice McCarthy said.

Mr Justice Edwards added that this was “an abuse of the section”.

“The nature of Section 22 is, once something is admitted under it, it is unassailable and cannot be challenged. You had got this into the case, and it was something which the prosecution could not challenge,” he said.

In response, Mr Bowman said, “two wrongs don’t make a right” and that it should have been dealt with in a different way by the judge.

He argued that the trial judge could not instruct the jury to “decide the case based on the evidence” and then say, “this can’t be all there is to it, this can’t exist in a vacuum,” and tell the jury “I’m not happy, and the guards aren’t happy.”

“The court, if it had that difficulty, should have flagged it well in advance,” he said. “The trial judge actually accepted and embraced the Section 22 admissions that I made.”

“The court had engaged - inadvertently I have no doubt - in advocacy for the prosecution,” he said.

In response, Dean Kelly SC for the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), said at its core, the defence position seemed to be that everything that was complained of in the judge’s charge was comment on the evidence.

“That is, in a sense, somewhat lazy or inaccurate because that’s not what it is,” he said.

“The judge was faced with a particularly knotty legal and intellectual proposition which he then had the unenviable task of explaining to the jury.”

He said the judge had stressed several times to the jury that context was everything.

“The particular factual context in respect of the timing of the admissions looms larger than almost everything else in the entire case,” Mr Kelly said.

He said what the judge was doing was attempting to charge the jury on these “admissions”.

Mr Kelly said the judge’s approach eschewed “excessive academia” in favour of being “direct and accessible”.
“I say he is to be commended for that,” counsel said.

He said the judge had told the jury that the only thing they must accept from him was the “pure law observations” and reminded them not to interpret anything he said as “a smoke signal” or as “some kind of non-verbal cue”.

In relation to the judge’s remarks about a “peeping Tom”, Mr Kelly said the essence of Connolly’s defence was that someone else came along after he had left and killed Mr Reilly.

He said the phrase was “used briefly” and moved on from in what was “otherwise a scholarly presentation to the jury about circumstantial evidence of which no complaint is made at all.”

Regarding the Section 22 admissions, Mr Kelly said the only party who benefited from their deployment was Connolly.

He said there was acquiescence from all parties that it could be done in this way.

“It is fundamentally not a matter pleaded by Mr Connolly and it is a matter that is not a part of this appeal,” he said.

Mr Justice John Edwards said the court would reserve judgement and deliver its decision at a later date.