An armed robber who terrorised supermarket staff with a sawn-off rifle received a fair hearing despite being handcuffed during his trial, a Canberra court has found.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The ACT Court of Appeal on Tuesday threw out an appeal by Dylan Elias Keenan, 33, against his conviction.
An ACT Supreme Court jury last year found Keenan guilty of aggravated robbery at the Chapman IGA in August 2013.
In December, Justice John Burns sentenced Keenan to nine years jail, with a non-parole period of six years.
But Keenan appealed the conviction on a number of grounds, including that the judge's decision to handcuff him during the trial had prejudiced the jury.
The offender burst into the store and struck a staff member in the face with the gun about 6.15am on August 19.
He demanded cash and fled with about $1500.
CCTV footage captured part of the crime.
Keenan fought the charges, arguing he wasn't the man pictured in the vision.
But evidence linked Keenan to the crime, including his DNA found in a balaclava located in a nearby carpark, a gun similar to the offending weapon was found in his home, a cartridge of a similar type to one seemingly missing from Keenan's gun was also found at the scene, and a witness saw a car similar to the one Keenan owned before the robbery.
During the trial, Keenan had a significant struggle with corrective services guards in the courtroom.
He claimed he had suffered a panic attack.
Security was subsequently beefed up, and he was handcuffed in front of the jury as a precaution.
Keenan's appeal covered five grounds, including prejudice, his defence team being unprepared, failure to call alibi evidence, and a challenge to the DNA evidence.
The appeal judges - Justice Richard Refshauge, Justice Hilary Penfold, and Justice Anthony North - dismissed them all.
In a decision, published on Tuesday, the judges said they had been satisfied that the verdict had been reasonable.
But the judgement – while finding the decision to handcuff Keenan had been correct - mildly rebuked Justice Burns explanation by telling jurors to ignore the bonds and to not speculate as to the reasons.
"It seems likely … that jury members were aware that something fairly dramatic had happened in the court room after they left," the judgement said.
"Discovering that Mr Keenan was now handcuffed no doubt suggested that he had been involved, and probably at fault, in the incident.
"His Honour's terse and somewhat peremptory directions to the jury to ignore the handcuffs and not to speculate about it might have been effective to prevent speculation but, given what the jury had apparently overheard, that could not be guaranteed."
The appeal judges, however, noted that the defence alerted jurors to the panic attack through questions, which would have reduced speculation.
"Accepting that Burns J had a very difficult issue to deal with, we do nevertheless consider that his Honour could have done more to explain the incident to the jury, both at the time and perhaps even in his summing up, in a way that might have mitigated the prejudicial effect of having Mr Keenan in handcuffs for the rest of the trial.
"However, we are not satisfied that, in the circumstances of this case, Mr Keenan's handcuffing during his trial provides any ground on which to uphold his appeal.
"In particular, we are not satisfied that his Honour fell into any kind of error in his approach to the problem, or that the approach taken deprived Mr Keenan of a fair trial, deprived him of a chance of acquittal or otherwise led to a miscarriage of justice."
