The Supreme Court is set to make a definitive ruling over Graham Dwyer’s persistent legal pursuit to overturn his murder conviction of childcare worker Elaine O’Hara, on Wednesday. Convicted in 2015, Dwyer has spent years engaging in numerous court proceedings striving to secure his liberty from prison.
Despite consistently negating any involvement in the murder of Ms. O’Hara, she vanished in late summer of 2012 from a park in Shanganagh, south Dublin, and a part of her remains were discovered on Killakee mountain more than a year later, identified through dental records. Testimonies during Dwyer’s trial indicated a Nokia phone retrieved from Vartry Reservoir in Co Wicklow in 2013 was allegedly used to communicate with Ms O’Hara, including messages pertaining to violence and concluding with a chilling text on the day of her disappearance instructing her to “go down to the shore and wait”.
The prosecution claimed that this phone, together with another found in the same reservoir, served as clandestine communication devices that Dwyer and O’Hara had used nearly exclusively for their interaction.
In the aftermath of his conviction, Dwyer put forth a long chain of civil challenges within multiple courts including the Supreme Court, the High Court, and the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU), successfully contesting section six of the 2011 Communications (Retention of Data) Act which allowed the keeping of phone metadata indiscriminately. A judgment passed by the CJEU in April 2022 declared Ireland’s method of data storage to be in violation of EU law.
However, previous attempts of Dwyer to appeal his conviction were quashed by a March verdict last year from the Court of Appeal, summarising the metadata evidence as “not very significant”, and deeming it acceptable. Even if discarded, the Court upheld that enough circumstantial proof existed to connect Dwyer with the two contentious phones that were pivotal to the prosecution argument.
The significance of phone metadata was a key factor in Dwyer securing another appeal, which was heard by a seven-person Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice Donal O’Donnell. Elaine O’Hara’s family, including her father Frank, her brother John, and her sister Anne Charles, attended the appeal hearing that took place in January; the court’s judgement is expected to be pronounced on Wednesday.
The prosecution maintained during the appeal that there was undeniable proof that the text messages sent to Ms. O’Hara were crafted by Dwyer. Ann-Marie Lawlor SC pointed out that the evidence derived from the text messages, such as those discussing Dwyer’s daughter’s birth, was independent of the metadata assessing the phone location data. The jury had made a connection between these phones and Dwyer.
However, Michael Bowman SC, representing Dwyer, contended that assigning the phones to Dwyer was a pivotal point in the trial. While he argued that the evidence from cell site analysis was not admissible, it served as the foundation for other pieces of proof, which the prosecutor alleged tied Dwyer with various phones.
The Supreme Court’s dismissal in June of related discussions relating to the admissibility of phone metadata in two distinct appeals has been viewed as a major blow to Dwyer’s aspirations to win his appeal.