A woman, who used a syringe to rob a Dublin shop, has lost her appeal against her sentence.

Samantha Irwin (37) had been identified by a bloodstained post-it that fell from her pocket during the robbery. Gardai had spotted the note while reviewing CCTV and matched her DNA to the blood on it.

The mother-of-two had grabbed the shop assistant by the jumper, uncapped a syringe and attempted to strike her in the arm. The shop assistant managed to remove her arm by pulling it up and out of her jumper.

Irwin demanded money and a total of €55 was handed over ….read more

The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal against sentence brought by a Dubliner jailed for four years and six months by the Special Criminal Court for IRA membership.

The court had already dismissed Conor Metcalfe’s appeal against conviction, saying that the trial court was entitled to use the opinion evidence of a garda chief superintendent in convicting, despite the officer’s refusal to answer questions about how he formed his opinion.

Metcalfe (30) of Monastery Park, Clondalkin was found guilty of IRA membership in December 2018 by the three-judge, non-jury Special Criminal Court.

The State’s case against him was based on the belief ….read more

Liam Campbell, who was found civilly liable for the Omagh bombing, is to be extradited to Lithuania, where he is suspected of international weapons smuggling.

The Court of Appeal has this morning dismissed an appeal against the extradition by Campbell, who has been battling extradition for more than 12 years.

He had wanted the three-judge court to overturn a decision by the High Court surrendering him to Lithuanian prosecutors, who allege that he was involved in the smuggling of weapons in support of the Real IRA (RIRA) between the end of 2006 and early 2007.

Campbell (58) was arrested in Upper Faughart, Dundalk, ….read more

A 30-year-old man has lost his appeal against conviction for murdering his girlfriend and mother of his infant son. He had acknowledged that since he lodged his submissions, there had been two relevant legal decisions regarding intoxication that might have made his sole ground of appeal unviable.

Adam O’Keefe was sentenced to life imprisonment in July 2018, after he was found guilty of the murder of Amy McCarthy in a squat in Cork city.

He had denied the murder but admitted the manslaughter of the 22-year-old on April 29th or April 30th, 2017 at a building on Sheares Street.

The issues raised in ….read more

An IRA member, who was questioned by members of the “Belfast brigade” over a botched operation, has lost his appeal against conviction.

Robert Day had argued that the identification of his voice from a bugging of what gardai believed was an IRA meeting had lacked any procedural safeguards.

The 50-year-old, of St Attracta Road, Cabra, in Dublin was jailed for five years in 2018, after being convicted of membership of an unlawful organisation within the State styling itself the Irish Republican Army, otherwise Oglaigh na hÉireann, otherwise the IRA on October 9th, 2015.

Presiding over the Special Criminal Court at the time, Justice ….read more

A serial sex attacker has lost his appeal against his 18-and-a-half-year jail term for three premeditated, random attacks on women over a five-year period in south Dublin.

The father-of-two was jailed in 2018 for the violent attacks, which the judge described as primal and brutal. Slawomir Gierlowski (37) had already lost an appeal against his convictions.

One of the attacks was carried out in broad daylight, with Gierlowski putting a hunting knife to his victim’s throat as she made her way to work.

The other two attacks involved a sexual assault and took place late at night as the women walked home after ….read more