Today is D-Day for killer Graham Dwyer, as the former architect is expected to find out if he has won his appeal against his conviction for the murder of childcare worker Elaine O’Hara.
Dwyer, 50, was jailed for life in April 2015 after he was convicted of her murder following a two-month long trial that gripped and horrified the nation. However, he immediately appealed that conviction.
He proclaims his innocence and the Court of Criminal Appeal heard his appeal against conviction late last year and three judges on it are due to give their verdict this morning. The court has three options.
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It can dismiss Dwyer’s appeal and uphold the murder conviction, quash his conviction and order a retrial or it can quash it and rule that there should be no trial. Dwyer was convicted of murdering Ms O’Hara, 36, after his trial heard he killed her for his sexual gratification.
A key plank of his appeal is challenging the use of data from his mobile phone in the case against him.
Messages on the phone played a key role in his conviction, but he won a High Court declaration in 2018 that the gathering of phone data, including his, went against EU law. The EU courts later found in his favour on that claim, too.
Dwyer is also claiming the trial judge should have discharged the jury as there was no forensic evidence as to how Ms O’Hara, who had serious mental health problems, died.
His barrister Michael Bowman SC told the appeal that suicide was “live and large in the case and there is nothing in the case that takes it out”.
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