Galway Bay fm newsroom - The daughter of an Oughterard publican who was killed during a burglary has asked the Court of Appeal not to allow her father's killer to appeal his conviction.
The three-judge court today refused to allow 26 year old Marian Lingurar Jnr leave to appeal after considering the impact fresh court proceedings would have on the victim's family ten years after the killing, and finding that the appeal had little chance of success.
The court will, however, allow Lingurar to appeal his nine-year prison sentence.
Marian Lingurar, a Romanian national with former addresses in Loughgeorge, Claregalway, and Blackpool, Cork, was found guilty by a jury in 2019 of the manslaughter of 56 year old John Kenny, at Kenny’s pub in Oughterard on September 25th 2011.
Following the burglary and killing, Lingurar broke his bail conditions, fled Ireland and returned under a false name, resulting in his trial being delayed until 2019.
The court will hear the appeal against the nine-year sentence after hearing that the defence intends to argue that, given Lingurar's youth, the sentence was overly severe.
Mr Justice Birmingham noted that Lingurar was a juvenile at the time of the offence and was in the company of older men including his father.
Mr Justice Birmingham noted that the impact on the deceased's family is "not as great" given that a sentence appeal does not carry the possibility of the verdict being overturned, a retrial and "interminable further delay."
The trial in 2019 heard evidence that Mr Kenny had been badly beaten, tied up and left to die alone on the floor of the ladies’ toilet in his pub by a gang of men, including Lingurar, who had planned to rob him that night.
His wife Kathleen Kenny and their daughter Gillian found his body the following evening.
