Graham Dwyer has lost his appeal against his conviction for the murder of childcare worker Elaine O’Hara in 2012.
The Court of Appeal today found that the limited admission of call data could not give rise to a miscarriage of justice and subsequently has not upheld any ground of appeal.
The 51-year-old architect will now remain in prison to continue serving his life sentence.
Ms Hara, aged 36 at the time, was stabbed to death on 22 August 2012 in a case which resulted in huge national coverage. O’Dwyer was later found by a jury to have stabbed O’Hara, who he had met online, to death.
He has been in custody since his arrest on 17 October 2013, and was convicted on 27 March 2015 in a unanimous verdict. Sentencing him to life imprisonment, judge Tony Hunt said that he “110% agreed” with jury’s decision.
Ms O’Hara was last seen alive in a public park in Shanganagh, Dublin, on 22 August. Her remains were discovered on Killakee Mountain, south of Dublin in September 2013. The 2015 murder trial and conviction of Dwyer resulted in the circulation of evidence relating to O’Dwyer’s sadistic sexual practices, with the murder labelled one of the most shocking crimes in Irish history.
Dwyer did not have a history of criminality and his background suggested “nothing of note”. He met Ms O’Hara on a fetish adult sex website after she viewed his profile. Police linked the account to the architect, and evidence emerged that Ms O’Hara and Dwyer were in a sexual relationship in 2008 that involved violence, bondage and knives.
While the relationship ended, it started again in March 2011 when Dwyer contacted the childcare worker. Recovered texts from discarded Nokia mobile phones sent in 2011 uncovered disturbing messages sent by Dwyer, in which he said he would “like to stab a girl to death sometime”.
“My urge to rape, stab or kill is huge. You have to help me control or satisfy it,” he told Ms O’Hara in another message.
A former partner of Dwyer’s testified in court that he had confided in her once about how he fantasised about stabbing a woman during sex, and started to bring a kitchen knife into their bedroom, pretending to stab her. That relationship ended in 1996.
He married in 2002, and in June 2006, was involved in a range of major developments in his career as an architect, including at Leopardstown racecourse, Carlow Institute of Technology, and in Poland. However, Dwyer, who enjoyed driving luxury cars, was in financial difficulty at the time of the murder. His trial heard how directors at the firm where he worked had suffered a 50% pay cut since 2009, cutting his wages to €70,000.
Appeal
Dwyer’s appeal questioned the legal basis for retaining mobile phone metadata (used in the prosecution case against him) and was upheld by the Court of Justice of the European Union. This ruling provided the basis for a further appeal by Dwyer.
Evidence from O’Hara’s phone and laptop resulted in warrants to search Dwyer’s house, where the police discovered further evidence. When he was arrested, he initially denied knowing Ms O’Hara, however this was quickly disproven. He denied murdering O’Hara.
At the trial, numerous messages from O’Hara were read out, which referred to Dwyer’s repeated threats to stab and kill her. His defence counsel argued that Ms O’Hara had a history of depression and that her cause of death had never been determined by pathologists. Dwyer’s defence said that the violent language used by Dwyer was proof of nothing more than his sexual fantasies.
However, the court found that the accumulated evidence showed Dwyer had hatched a detailed plan to commit and get away with murder. Seán Guerin SC, prosecuting, said he had used Ms O’Hara’s low self esteem to manipulate her, while his desire to kill a woman was well-documented in text messages.
He said that Ms O’Hara only wanted “companionship, love and ultimately a child” and was not a willing participant in sexual violence.
The trial found that knowing she had recently been released from a psychiatric hospital, Dwyer had lured the childcare worker to the cemetery, with the intent to bring her to the mountains to kill her. He expected that if her phone was found, people would think she had committed suicide. However, he failed in his bid to hide his relationship with her by hiding the mobile phones.
During and after the trial, Dwyer’s legal team pointed to legislation relating to the capture and use of mobile phone data – relied upon during the trial – saying that this was invalid.
Specifically, they claimed a grounds for appeal on the basis that Ireland’s Communications (Retention of Data) Act 2011. Such claims contributed to a review of how state agencies use the type of data covered by the legislation. If upheld, it was reported that the appeal would impact the admissibility of the mobile phone evidence in the Dwyer case – and other cases which rely upon mobile phone data in Garda investigations.
In late 2021, an adviser reviewing the case on behalf of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued an opinion that the retention of mobile phone metadata was “permitted only in the event of a threat to national security”, and not for the investigation of crimes.
In April 2022, the CJEU ruled that the “indiscriminate retention of mobile phone metadata” was not consistent with EU law, setting the basis for the Court of Appeal in Ireland to determine whether the related evidence was admissible in Dwyer’s original trial As of late June 2022, the Irish government was considering emergency legislation to “deal with the fallout” from Dwyer’s appeal and the CJEU ruling
The Court of Appeal later found there was other evidence independent of the call data records – which was described as being “arguably more powerful” including on two phones.
The three judges also rejected Dwyer’s claims that the garda interviews were inadmissible or that the showing of explicit videos at the trial, media leaks while he was in custody, media coverage of the trial, or the trial judge’s facial expressions, were prejudicial.