The Court of Criminal Appeal has overturned the State’s first successful cold case murder conviction.
The three-judge court found that prejudicial evidence used to “blacken” the name of Vera McGrath (64) was heard at her trial and had the effect of rendering it unsafe and unsatisfactory.
Presiding judge Mr Justice Adrian Hardiman said the court would quash the conviction and direct a retrial of Mrs McGrath, who was jailed for life in July 2010 having been found guilty by a Central Criminal Court jury of the murder of 43-year-old Bernard Brian McGrath, 23 years after he was killed.
She had denied murdering her husband in Lower Coole, Westmeath, between March 10th and April 18th 1987.
Counsel for the applicant, Mr Patrick Gageby SC, submitted that a "hatchet job" had been done on Vera McGrath by her co-accused Colin Pinder, of Liverpool in the United Kingdom, who was jailed for nine years in December 2010 after he was acquitted of murder but convicted of the manslaughter of Mr McGrath, to which he had pleaded guilty.
He said the court had heard prejudicial evidence from a witness who allegedly observed the applicant crushing up tablets and putting them in Brian McGrath’s tea before dressing him in tights and calling a doctor to say the deceased had “gone mad”.
Mr Gageby said the trial judge had "grossly underestimated" the danger of an unfair trial on the basis of this "unhelpful pejorative material", and had there been separate trials for both defendants his client would not have to "deal with" the material which had rubbished her credibility.
He submitted that Vera McGrath had suffered an injustice after an application for a separate trial to that of Pinder was refused, adding that the decision to proceed with a joint trial was inappropriate as joint enterprise was a “graveyard” of cases.
Mr Justice Hardiman said that Pinder, who had admitted participating in the killing but alleged he had done so at the instigation of Vera McGrath, was entitled to cross-examine witnesses to draw out the suggestion that his participation was less than was required to establish a case of murder.
He said that Pinder took advantage of this to attack the credibility of Mrs McGrath and to blacken her character and “it worked for him”.
Mr Justice Hardiman said the court was of the opinion that there was “considerable conceptual difficulty” in a case posited and advanced as one of joint enterprise but where only one of the defendants was guilty of murder.
He said the court found there was an “inherent contradiction” from the start in trying to convince a jury that the case was both one of murder by joint enterprise and one where Pinder might be regarded as “merely guilty” of manslaughter.
Mr Justice Hardiman said there had been a “strong case” for running a joint trial because of the allegedly mutually involved nature of the case, but as it happened the effect was to permit Pinder to “blacken” Mrs McGrath.
“The court is not happy it can be said that the conviction was either a safe or a satisfactory one”, Mr Justice Hardiman said. As there was “plainly a body of evidence”, Mr Justice Hardiman said the court would quash the conviction and direct a retrial.
Mr Justice Hardiman said that in directing a retrial the court was doing no more than saying it should direct a retrial and was not stating the prosecution had to proceed with a retrial.
Mr Gageby asked that Mrs McGrath be released on bail on the same conditions as previously imposed at trial. There was no objection from the State.
After entering in to a bond before the court registrar, Mrs McGrath walked out of the Criminal Courts of Justice Complex on Dublin's Parkgate Street.