The Court of Appeal has rejected Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy’s attempt to overturn his convictions for evading tax on farming profits.
The Court of Appeal has rejected Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy’s attempt to overturn his convictions for evading tax on farming profits.
The prominent Republican of Ballybinaby, Hackballscross, County Louth claimed he was denied a fair trial before the Special Criminal Court.
Hundreds of pages of legal submissions were presented to the Court of Appeal last November.
His lawyers raised 48 grounds of appeal – among them a claim that the court used unreliable evidence to find him guilty of evading tax, particularly in relation to its acceptance of Garda statements instead of the direct of a number of key witnesses.
The Court of Appeal decided the evidence before the trial judges was enough to satisfy the criteria required to allow the statements to be read into evidence.
A 94-page judgement detailing the reasons for ruling against Mr. Murphy on that ground and all his other grounds of appeal was handed to his legal team this morning.
His case will be mentioned again next week to allow the 67-year-old time to consider whether he wants to appeal the 18-month sentence he has been serving since last February.
