Jozef Puska\u2019s appeal against his conviction for the murder of schoolteacher Ashling Murphy has been postponed after he decided to change his barristers less than a week before the hearing was due to begin.<\/p>\n
Murphy had been exercising along the canal towpath outside Tullamore, Co Offaly when Puska attacked her, on January 12th, 2022. He killed the 23-year-old by repeatedly stabbing her in the neck. Puska was later convicted of murder and is serving a life sentence.<\/p>\n
Last December, Court of Appeal president, Justice Caroline Costello, set a hearing date of April 23rd and 24th for Puska\u2019s appeal against his conviction.<\/p>\n
His lawyers told the court at the time that submissions were at \u201can advanced stage\u201d and noted two judgments were awaited from the Court of Appeal that are relevant to his own appeal.<\/p>\n
Puska, who told detectives he stopped working in 2017 due to a slipped disc in his back, has been granted legal aid for his appeal. This was granted on the same basis as his representation during his trial at the Central Criminal Court, where he was allocated a solicitor, a senior counsel and two junior counsel.<\/p>\n
At the Court of Appeal on Friday, Karl Monahan BL, with Michael Bowman SC, representing Puska, told Justice Isobel Kennedy that following instructions by Puska to his solicitor, \u201cit has become necessary to make an application seeking to withdraw from the case\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said Puska\u2019s solicitor has engaged a new senior counsel who is in a position to come into the case. However, the new senior counsel is not in a position to go ahead with the appeal hearing scheduled to start next Thursday, April 23rd.<\/p>\n
Monahan said he thought it \u201cexpedient\u201d to bring the matter to the attention of the court \u201cat the earliest opportunity\u201d. He said all counsel involved in the case required to be released but Puska\u2019s solicitor remains instructed.<\/p>\n
Monahan confirmed to Kennedy that this would impact on the scheduled hearing date.<\/p>\n
Counsel for the Director of the Public Prosecutions (DPP), Anne-Marie Lawlor SC, told the court the DPP\u2019s legal team were in a position to proceed, adding it was their preference to go ahead with the hearing and that the victim\u2019s family were \u201canxious\u201d to see the case proceed. She noted the matter had been set down for two days.<\/p>\n
The judge listed the matter for next Friday, April 24th, and said she intended to give it \u201cthe earliest hearing date possible\u201d.<\/p>\n
Puska (35), with an address at Lynally Grove, Mucklagh, Co Offaly, had pleaded not guilty to murdering Murphy. The jury found that Puska stabbed her 11 times in the neck and slashed her once with the edge of a blade before leaving her to die on the canal towpath between Tullamore town and Digby Bridge. A monument now stands where she died.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jozef Puska\u2019s appeal against his conviction for the murder of schoolteacher Ashling Murphy has been postponed after he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403528,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2287,1523,61,11829,60,3410,1196,96161,8874,43,13943,1650],"class_list":{"0":"post-403527","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-conflict","9":"tag-government","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-iran","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-israel","14":"tag-middle-east","15":"tag-mideast","16":"tag-military","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-political","19":"tag-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}