The trial heard Mr Reilly had been out with a group of young people, including Connolly, in Dunleer in Co Louth on 25 May 2018.<\/p>\n
The group had been drinking in a field and left around midnight to get food from a takeaway.<\/p>\n
The prosecution case was that Connolly returned to the field with Mr Reilly and murdered him by strangling him.<\/p>\n
His body was found the next morning by a local man out walking his dog.<\/p>\n
A post mortem examination found he had died from asphyxia from pressure to his neck.<\/p>\n
Connolly told garda\u00ed that he and Mr Reilly had gone their separate ways at the end of the night and that he did not look back.<\/p>\n
During the trial, he admitted there had been sexual activity between them, but he maintained that Mr Reilly had been alive when he left him.<\/p>\n
Connolly’s DNA was found on Mr Reilly\u2019s body.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/001d003f-614.jpg\"\/)
\nCameron Reilly was killed in Louth in 2018<\/p>\n
The Appeal Court found the trial judge\u2019s charge to the jury in the trial lacked balance.<\/p>\n
It ruled that because of the “stridency and emphasis” of the comments made by Mr Justice Tony Hunt, the jurors could have perceived he was personally convinced of Connolly\u2019s guilt and was implicitly pressing them to deliver a guilty verdict.<\/p>\n
It found that in places, Judge Hunt\u2019s charge could have been perceived by the jurors as advocacy for the prosecution.<\/p>\n
The court ruled that the judge did not intentionally seek to influence the jury members inappropriately.<\/p>\n
But it found he made clear to them over and over again that he had strong personal views on some aspects of the case, and that not only had he commended questions they might consider asking, he also gave his view on how those questions should be answered.<\/p>\n
Connolly has already spent more than three years in prison for the murder.<\/p>\n
Prosecution counsel, Dean Kelly told the judges it was the view of the Director of Public Prosecutions that a retrial should be directed.<\/p>\n
Defence counsel, Michael Bowman said he could not object to this, and the court ruled it would direct another trial.<\/p>\n
Connolly was remanded in custody and will appear in the Central Criminal Court tomorrow morning when the judges said any application for bail could be made.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Court of Appeal has directed a retrial for a man whose conviction for murder was quashed last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":482919,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-482918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482918","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=482918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}