‘Home invasion’ appeal delayed over legal aid

(CNS): Shane Connor’s appeal against his conviction in connection with a home invasion in Patrick’s Island almost eight years ago has been delayed yet again as he battles to secure funding for forensic reports that he believes will clear his name. Connor (47), who was convicted in September 2021 of robbery, has consistently denied being part of the violent crime that involved at least three men. He claims he has been targeted by the authorities and convicted on the false testimony of a crown witness, who was later murdered.

Connor has always said he was in East End on the night of the infamous crime spree, which ended with a couple tied up and brutalised in their own home by the robbers.

However, he was found guilty by a jury and sentenced to twelve years’ imprisonment. Since then, he has attempted to appeal but has encountered numerous challenges and delays, from securing a local defence attorney to getting a KC from the UK to lead the case.

Now the legal aid office has refused to fund the necessary DNA re-evaluation. The court also heard that a report undermining the crown’s cell phone evidence presented during the trial had not yet been handed to the prosecution, even though Connor’s lawyer has had the document since January.

Connor has consistently argued that the evidence placing his phone somewhere within the area of the crime was distorted. He also claims he has other phone evidence that shows he was not in the Prospect area at the time of the robbery, which was not properly assessed by his lawyers during the trial.

He also maintains that the small amount of DNA connecting him to a bag related to the crime must be there as a result of transfer because he was not involved.

Legal aid representatives have said they want reassurances from the appeal court that any new DNA forensic evidence turned up by Connor’s legal team would be admissible before granting the funding. But the appeal court judges explained they could not make such a determination for legal aid purposes. Their job was to consider whether the report, once they had it, had probative value or not.

The appeal has now been reset for the summer session to give Connor’s local attorney more time to secure the legal aid funding for the reports, which he says are fundamental to his appeal. The importance of the DNA report in particular was stressed by Connor’s lawyer when she told the court that without this forensic information, there can be no appeal, as the other evidence indicating a potential unsafe conviction was not, on its own, enough to warrant an appeal.

While the crown urged the court to press ahead with the case or to insist on a final date for the hearing, the appeal court said while they were sympathetic to the crown’s request, given the significant number of adjournments in this case, they allowed another adjournment and warned that while they would not insist on a final date, it would take considerable persuasion for the case not to proceed at the next sitting.

Connor was convicted largely on the evidence of the crown’s witness, Caine Thomas, who had eventually pleaded guilty to his own involvement. He first testified against Elmer Wright, considered by prosecutors as the ring leader and the most violent of the participants in the horrifying crime.

Wright was sentenced after he was convicted at trial in 2020 and given a life sentence with a minimum 20-year term. He has since been transferred to the UK to serve his time after the authorities claimed he was a national security threat.

During the trial, the crown offered a trace of DNA on a bag used by the robbers and telephone records as corroborative evidence, but it was Thomas’s testimony that sealed Connor’s fate. In return, Thomas was released early following his guilty pleas. However, shortly after he left prison, he was killed in a gang-related shooting on Seven Mile Beach in April 2022 when he was just 21 years old.

To date, no one has been charged with his murder.