Man whose rape conviction quashed has all charges dropped

A man whose conviction for rape was quashed by the Court of Appeal has had all pending charges dropped against him.

The man was jailed for ten years in 2017 after a jury found him guilty of raping a woman he met after she became lost on a night out in Dublin city.

The man pleaded not guilty to two counts of raping the woman and one count of sexual assault at a flat in Dublin city centre on February 9th, 2014.

He rejected the jury’s verdict. Last July (2019) the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial after quashing the conviction over the trial judge’s failure to instruct the jury on the presumption of innocence.

Giving judgment in the Court of Appeal, Judge John Edwards said that although both sides referred to the presumption of innocence in their closing speeches, the trial judge “unfortunately” omitted to do so.

Mr Justice Edwards said it was “almost inconceivable” that one of the most experienced criminal trial judges on the bench at that time would simply forget to give the jury several important instructions.

Mr Justice Edwards said the failure to instruct the jury at all on the presumption of innocence was a “fatal flaw” that rendered the trial unsatisfactory and his conviction unsafe.

He said the failure to instruct a jury on the presumption of innocence had previously occurred in a 2003 trial that led to a successful appeal.

The State’s case was that in February 2014 the complainant was on a social night out in Dublin city and got lost and became upset. It was alleged the man met her and brought her back to a flat in the city and she fell asleep.

She allegedly awoke to find him having sex with her and the defence case was that the sex was consensual.

At a bail hearing last July Sean Guerin SC told Justice Micheal White that the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) was seeking a new trial.

On Monday morning Caroline Cummings BL told the court that the DPP was entering nolle prosequi in the three counts on the indictment.