{"id":443952,"date":"2026-05-11T22:16:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T22:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/443952\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T22:16:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T22:16:07","slug":"bray-boxing-club-shooter-says-jury-should-not-have-been-shown-photos-of-him-holding-a-gun-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/443952\/","title":{"rendered":"Bray Boxing club shooter says jury should not have been shown photos of him holding a gun \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A 38-year-old man who shot and fatally injured an innocent father of three as he attended an early morning gym class at Bray<\/a> Boxing Club eight years ago has argued that Facebook photos showing him holding a firearm at a gun range should not have been shown to the jury at his trial.<\/p>\n

Gerard Cervi, from the East Wall area of Dublin<\/a> 3, had pleaded not guilty to murdering Robert \u2018Bobby\u2019 Messett at Bray Boxing Club, Bray Harbour, Co Wicklow<\/a> on June 5th, 2018. He also pleaded not guilty to the attempted murders of Pete Taylor and Ian Britton on the same date and at the same location. <\/p>\n

His lawyers said the trial judge was wrong to rule them admissible because she deemed the fact Cervi \u201cadopts a stance similar to that described of the gunman\u201d to be relevant.<\/p>\n

The trial heard that a group of people had assembled at the boxing club in the early hours for a training session when a gunman appeared at the door and opened fire. <\/p>\n

Messett was closest to Cervi and died instantly from a single bullet to the head. Well-known boxing coach Pete Taylor was instructing the class and was injured by the gunman while Britton also suffered injuries. <\/p>\n

Cervi was found guilty of Messett\u2019s murder by a unanimous jury verdict after two trials lasting a combined 17 weeks over a two-year period and was sentenced to the mandatory term of life imprisonment in December 2023. He was acquitted of attempting to murder Taylor and Britton.<\/p>\n

No motive was ever advanced for why Cervi entered Bray Boxing Club at about 6.30am and opened fire nine times into the crowded room.<\/p>\n

At Cervi\u2019s sentencing hearing, Messett\u2019s daughter Demi said the family found it hard to accept her father was \u201cin the wrong place at the wrong time\u201d and asked: \u201cWhy would such an evil act be carried out in a place where people went to simply keep fit?\u201d<\/p>\n

Garda\u00ed told the hearing there was \u201cabsolutely no evidence or suggestion\u201d that Messett was \u201cin any way, shape or form the target\u201d.<\/p>\n

Opening an appeal against conviction on Monday, John Fitzgerald SC argued the trial judge had erred in allowing the jury to view a montage of CCTV. He said there were issues with the timing of the clips and a lack of clarity as to who downloaded the footage and when. Counsel suggested the prosecution had \u201creverse engineered\u201d the footage to make it fit a narrative.<\/p>\n

Fitzgerald also argued that social media images showing Cervi using a \u201cparticular stance\u201d while holding a firearm should not have been admitted. He said there was no evidence that this stance \u201cwas in any way unusual\u201d and said the evidence was irrelevant and prejudicial.<\/p>\n

The judge at Cervi\u2019s trial admitted the photos on the basis the stance adopted by Cervi \u201cmirrors that described by Peter Taylor\u201d. <\/p>\n

Fitzgerald also told the three-judge Court of Appeal<\/a> that the jury should have been given \u201ca specific\u201d and more robust warning of the dangers of identifying Cervi from CCTV.<\/p>\n

Counsel said in a situation where a jury is seeing \u201csix hours of footage\u201d then a \u201cvery, very strong warning\u201d is needed to highlight to the jury that they are viewing someone \u201cin a very prejudicial circumstance\u201d.<\/p>\n

The barrister also asserted that surveillance photographs of Cervi taken by garda\u00ed while he was in his garden shouldn\u2019t have been admitted. <\/p>\n

Fitzgerald also suggested the judge was wrong to rule certain adverse inferences admissible. <\/p>\n

He said three bottles of white spirits, two full and one empty, were found in a Volkswagen Caddy van that the prosecution alleged was used by the shooter. Cervi\u2019s fingerprints were on two of them.<\/p>\n

Cervi told garda\u00ed he had been in the van a \u201cfew times\u201d to buy drugs, counsel said, but it was not clear that he had been in the vehicle on the day of the shooting and there was nothing to \u201ctie the fingerprints on the bottles to any specified time\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said for an inference to be relied upon, there needed to be proof that either the bottles were in Cervi\u2019s possession on June 5th, 2018, or that he was in the van on that date.<\/p>\n

Cervi is advancing a total of 14 grounds in his appeal.<\/p>\n

Other points relate to the admittance of evidence from garda\u00ed relating to conversations with Cervi which were not noted down immediately and were not read back to the defendant and criticism of \u201cexcessive\u201d and \u201cdisruptive\u201d interruptions of Cervi\u2019s barristers by the trial judge at a preliminary trial hearing.<\/p>\n

The appeal hearing continues on Tuesday when counsel for the State will respond to Fitzgerald\u2019s submissions.<\/p>\n

The trial heard that a group of people had assembled at the boxing club in the early hours for a training session when a gunman appeared at the door and opened fire. Taylor and Britton were injured while Messett died immediately at the scene.<\/p>\n

Prosecution counsel Paul Murray SC had told the jury that CCTV evidence was sufficient to convict Cervi, but when added to the presence of his DNA and fingerprints in the Volkswagen Caddy van, it led to the \u201cinevitable\u201d conclusion that he was guilty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 38-year-old man who shot and fatally injured an innocent father of three as he attended an early…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443953,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5981,10202,615,61,60,43,7469],"class_list":["post-443952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-bray","tag-court-of-appeal","tag-dublin","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-wicklow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443952","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=443952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}