Boy B may claim PTSD in Ana appeal
Teen is appealing conviction for Ana Kriegel murder
AN APPEAL by one of the boys convicted of murdering schoolgirl Ana Kriegel may involve the claim he suffered post-traumatic stress disorder.
Boy B has hired a top law firm to appeal his conviction for the 2018 murder of the 14-year-old girl.
His grounds of appeal have yet to be revealed.
But it is thought they could include a decision by the trial judge to exclude evidence from a clinical psychologist.
Boy B’s previous legal team unsuccessfully sought to introduce evidence from the psychologist that the boy was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after witnessing the assault on Ana, and that there was an explanation for the lies he told gardaí.
He and the other boy convicted for the murder, known as Boy A, are currently being held at Oberstown House detention centre.
A BOY appealing his conviction for the murder of 14-yearold Ana Kriegel has hired the law firm which successfully defended former Anglo Irish Bank chairman Seán FitzPatrick against criminal charges.
The teenager, known as Boy B, sacked his old legal team and is now being represented by Michael J Staines and Company, one of the country’s leading criminal defence firms.
His decision to change legal teams meant his appeal, which had been due to get under way on April 24, had to be postponed to a later date.
The solicitors’ practice has been involved in several high-profile cases in recent years, including the trial of Mr FitzPatrick on charges of hiding loans from auditors.
It also represented another former Anglo chief executive, David Drumm, and acted for Patrick Quirke, the farmer jailed for the murder of Bobby Ryan, the part-time DJ known as ‘Mr Moonlight’.
Another high-profile client is mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor. The firm represented him when he was wrongly accused of fathering a love child.
Boy B was one of two teenagers found guilty of the murder of Ana in a derelict farmhouse two years ago today.
He was given a 15-year sentence, to be reviewed after eight years.
While he did not assault her, he led her to the derelict farmhouse in Lucan, Co Dublin, where she was sexually assaulted and murdered by another teen, known as Boy A.
Both boys were 13 at the time and are the youngest people in the history of the State to be convicted of murder. Neither of them can be named.
Boy A was sentenced to a life term for murder and will serve an initial 12 years, followed by a review which could see it extended.
While Boy A denied murder and sexual assault at his trial, a court heard how subsequent to being convicted he accepted he caused Ana’s death.
However, Boy B has maintained his innocence.
A court heard that he did not accept the verdict of the jury.
Boy B is seeking to appeal against his conviction only, meaning no appeal is being sought against the severity of his sentence.
His grounds of appeal have yet to be revealed.
But it is thought they could include a decision by the trial judge to exclude evidence from a clinical psychologist.
Boy B’s then legal team unsuccessfully sought to introduce evidence from the psychologist that the boy was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after witnessing the assault on Ana, and that there was an explanation for lies he told gardaí.
Both boys are currently being held at Oberstown detention centre in north Co Dublin, where they will remain until they are 18 and then join the mainstream prison system.
Although they were friends up to the point of Ana’s death, it is understood their relationship with each other has strained and they are not close any more. Children locked up in Oberstown detention campus are not referred to as ‘prisoners’, but ‘young people in conflict with the law’.
The emphasis is on education and the campus more resembles a high security school than a jail.
Oberstown was built to detain children who are often guilty of violent crimes and it was not originally envisioned there would be many killers in its classrooms.
Last month they were joined at the facility by another boy, now 17, who received a life sentence for the murder of 20-year-old college student Cameron Blair.
Mr Blair was stabbed in the neck outside a house party in Cork city last January.
Another boy, now 17, was sentenced to 11 years last November for attempted murder after he lured a woman he met on a dating site to an isolated area at the seafront in Dún Laoghaire in December 2017 and slashed her neck with a knife.