The Director of Public Prosecutions v D W

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Court: Court of Appeal (Ireland)
• Judge: Mr. Justice Edwards
• Judgment Date: 12 December 2025
• Neutral Citation: [2025] IECA 286
• Docket Number: Record No: 168/2022

Between/

The People (At the Suit of the Director of Public Prosecutions)

Respondent

and

D.W.

Appellant

[2025] IECA 286

Edwards J.

McCarthy J.

Burns J.

Record No: 168/2022

THE COURT OF APPEAL

Conviction – Assault causing harm – Failure to discharge jury – Appellant appealing against conviction – Whether the trial judge erred in law and in fact in failing to discharge the jury when requested to do so by counsel for the appellant

Facts: The appellant was convicted by a jury in the Central Criminal Court of twelve counts, namely: (i) counts 1, 2, 6 and 9 related to the offence of assault causing harm contrary to s. 3 of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997; (ii) counts 3 and 8 concerned an offence of production of an article contrary to s. 11 of the Firearms and Offensive Weapons Act 1990; (iii) count 4 concerned an offence of threatening to kill or cause serious harm contrary to s. 5 of the 1997 Act; (iv) count 5 concerned an offence of false imprisonment contrary to s. 15 of the 1997 Act; (v) counts 7, 10 and 11 related to the offence of rape contrary to s. 48 of the Offences Against the Persons Act 1861 and s. 2 of the Criminal Law (Rape) Act 1981; (vi) count 12 concerned the offence of coercive control contrary to s. 39(3) of the Domestic Violence Act 2018. The appellant appealed to the Court of Appeal against his conviction. The remaining grounds of appeal to be decided upon were as follows: (2) the trial judge erred in law and in fact in failing to discharge the jury when requested to do so by counsel for the appellant; (3) the trial was unsatisfactory in all the circumstances; and (6) the trial Judge erred in law and, in fact, by admitting evidence of the impact of the offences on the complainant during her evidence-in-chief, which said evidence was irrelevant to the issue to be tried and prejudiced the appellant’s right to afair trial.

Held by the Court that: (2) it had previously emphasised in People (DPP) v Cawley and Da Silva [2015] IECA 100 that while a trial court always has jurisdiction to discharge a jury in the case of a truly egregious unfairness arising from remarks of counsel, a case justifying so extreme a measure will be rare and this was not such a case as the circumstances did not remotely approach what would have been necessary to justify such an intervention; (6) such evidence as was led by the prosecution concerning the appellant’s alleged coercive controlling behaviour was entirely relevant, probative and necessary; and (3) having rejected the specific complaints the subject matter of the second and sixth grounds of appeal, there being no other specific complaints, and having had the opportunity to consider the transcript in detail in addressing such specific complaints as were made, the appellant’s trial was satisfactory.

The Court dismissed the appellant’s appeal against his convictions.

Appeal dismissed.

NO REDACTION NEEDED

JUDGMENT of the Court delivered by Mr. Justice Edwards on the 12 ^th day of December 2025.

Introduction

1 On the 2nd of June 2022, Mr. D.W. (i.e., “the appellant”) was convicted by a jury in the Central Criminal Court of twelve counts, namely:

• (i) Count no's 1, 2, 6 and 9 relate to the offence of assault causing harm contrary to s. 3 of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997 (“the Act of 1997”);

• (ii) Count no's 3 and 8 concern an offence of production of an article contrary to s. 11 of the Firearms and Offensive Weapons Act 1990;

• (iii) Count no 4 concerns an offence of threatening to kill or cause serious harm contrary to s. 5 of the Act of 1997;

• (iv) Count no 5 concerns an offence of false imprisonment contrary to s. 15 of the Act of 1997;

• (v) Count no's 7, 10 and 11 relate to the offence of rape contrary to s. 48 of the Offences Against the Persons Act 1861 and s. 2 of the Criminal Law (Rape) Act 1981 as amended by s. 21 of the Criminal Law (Rape) (Amendment) Act 1990;

• (vi) Count no 12 concerns the offence of coercive control contrary to s. 39(3) of the Domestic Violence Act 2018 (“the Act of 2018”).

2 Sentencing took place on the 28th of July 2022, on which occasion the appellant was duly sentenced to concurrent terms of imprisonment of varying lengths, but effectively amounting to an aggregate carceral term of 18 years imprisonment, with the final 12 months suspended, which was to date from the 17th of July 2019 to account for time spent in custody.

3 The appellant by Notice of Appeal dated the 4th of July 2024 has appealed against both his conviction and sentence. The present judgment deals with the conviction module of the said appeal.

Background to the Appeal

4 The appellant was convicted by the unanimous verdict of a jury, after a contested trial before Letterkenny Central Criminal Court that lasted 8 days, of twelve counts consisting of offences of assault, production of an article capable of inflicting serious harm, threats to kill or cause serious harm, false imprisonment, rape, and coercive control.

5 The complainant gave lengthy evidence before the jury over several days, during which she was examined in chief, cross-examined and re-examined. It is not practical in a judgment such as this to rehearse her evidence in all its detail. However, the summary hereinafter provided sets out some of the main features of her testimony.

6 The evidence established that the offending behaviour was committed by the appellant over a period of six weeks in June and July 2019. A Ms. S.O. (i.e., “the complainant”) had emigrated to the United States of America in 1995, where she subsequently gave birth to her son. In 2006, she returned with her son to Donegal to live and she began working in a nursing home shortly after.

7 In May 2019, the appellant met the complainant on a dating app called “Plenty of Fish”. A picture of the appellant on the dating app showed that he purported to be from Letterkenny. After exchanging various messages back and forth, they met up on Friday the 31st of May 2019. On this date, the complainant was returning home from work after 8 pm, she gave the appellant her address and he arrived at her home between 9 and 10 pm. The pair appeared to get on very well and the appellant spent the night with the complainant.

8 The complainant thought that the appellant would only stay until Sunday as he had said he was due to start work on a construction site in Monaghan. However, on the Sunday he said he could not go to Monaghan until after he had completed a Safe Pass course which he was due to undertake on the following Thursday. Accordingly, the appellant stayed in the complainant's home until the following Wednesday evening, and then left ostensibly to do the scheduled Safe Pass course on the Thursday. The appellant phoned the complainant on Thursday evening and informed her that he had lied about where he was living on his dating profile, that he was not in fact living in Letterkenny but was instead living in Dublin. The complainant was annoyed that he had lied to her and hung up the phone. She received numerous messages from the appellant following this, all of which she ignored.

9 The following morning, the appellant unexpectedly walked into the complainant's house. In evidence, she stated that she was surprised to see him, and she asked him where he had been, to which the appellant informed her that he had been in her shed all night. The evidence established that this shed is directly at the back of her house, and it was normally left unlocked. She stated that the appellant started crying and begged her not to leave him. He said “Please don't leave me, don't cheat on me, I love you. I want to be with you”, to which she replied that she would not cheat on him as long he did not lie to her anymore.

10 The complainant became aware that the appellant was monitoring searches made by her on Google using her phone while she was out of the house at work. He eventually told her that her phone was synced with her laptop, which meant that if she googled anything on her phone her search automatically appeared also on her laptop screen at home. She noticed that her friends were contacting her with messages which she did not understand and asked the appellant if he was messaging her friends pretending to be her, to which he replied, “Yes, well you need to know if [M] is talking about you”. The complainant described feeling angry and controlled and that her privacy had been violated. She asked him to stop and to leave her stuff alone.

11 The complainant later realised that the appellant was reading her e-mails. It was also outlined in the evidence, that the appellant was deleting friends from the complainant's Facebook account and taking them out of her contacts list. The evidence adduced at trial demonstrated hundreds of the complainant's friends who had been blocked, without her authority.

12 Evidence was also given by the complainant which established that the appellant would “bombard” her with messages while she was at work, these messages included asking her what she was doing at that exact moment and others would ask her to send a photograph of where she was at that point in time, in order to prove that she was at work.

Count no 1

13 On the 11th of June 2019, the complainant became aware that the appellant had sent friend requests from his Facebook account to some of her friends. The complainant and appellant were together in the living room downstairs at the time the complainant made this discovery. The complainant became upset and went upstairs to her bedroom and locked the door. The appellant came up, was banging on the door and threatened to kick it in if she did not unlock it. The complainant unlocked the door, and the appellant entered the room. The complainant asked him to leave her alone and informed him that she was deleting messages he had sent to her phone. The appellant attempted to grab her phone and then sprayed...