Bray Boxing club shooter claims photos of him holding gun shouldn’t have been admitted at trial
Fiona Magennis
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 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.
His lawyers said the trial judge was wrong to rule them admissible because she deemed the fact that Gerard Cervi “adopts a stance similar to that described of the gunman” to be relevant.
Cervi from the East Wall area in Dublin 3, had pleaded not guilty to murdering Robert 'Bobby' Messett at Bray Boxing Club, Bray Harbour, Co Wicklow 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.
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.
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 Mr Britton also suffered injuries.
Cervi was found guilty of Mr Messett’s 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.
No motive was ever advanced for why Gerard Cervi entered Bray Boxing Club at about 6.30am and opened fire nine times into the crowded room.
At Cervi’s sentencing hearing, Messett’s daughter Demi said the family finds it hard to accept that her father was "in the wrong place at the wrong time" and asked: "Why would such an evil act be carried out in a place where people went to simply keep fit?”
Gardaí told the hearing there was “absolutely no evidence or suggestion that Mr Messett was in any way shape or form the target".
Opening an appeal against conviction today (MON), John Fitzgerald SC argued the trial judge 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 "reverse engineered" the footage to make it fit a narrative.
Fitzgerald also argued that social media images showing Mr Cervi using a "particular stance” while holding a firearm should not have been admitted.
He said there was no evidence that this stance “was in any way unusual” and said the evidence was irrelevant and prejudicial.
The judge at Cervi's trial admitted the photos on the basis the stance adopted by Cervi "mirrors that described by Peter Taylor".
Fitzgerald also told the three-judge Court of Appeal that the jury should have been given “a specific” and more robust warning of the dangers of identifying Cervi from CCTV.
Counsel said in a situation where a jury is seeing “six hours of footage” then a “very very strong warning” is needed to highlight to the jury that they are viewing someone “in a very prejudicial circumstance”.
The barrister also asserted that surveillance photographs of Cervi taken by gardaí while he was in his garden shouldn’t have been admitted.
Fitzgerald also suggested the judge was wrong to rule certain adverse inferences admissible.
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's fingerprints were on two of them.
Cervi told gardaí he had been in the van a “few times” 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 “tie the fingerprints on the bottles to any specified time”.
He said for an inference to be relied upon, there needed to be proof that either the bottles were in Cervi’s possession on June 5, 2018 or that he was in the van on that date.
Cervi is advancing a total of 14 grounds in his appeal.
Other points relate to the admittance of evidence from gardaí relating to conversations with Cervi, which were not noted down immediately and were not read back to the defendant and criticism of “excessive” and “disruptive” interruptions of Cervi’s barristers by the trial judge at a preliminary trial hearing.
The appeal hearing continues on Tuesday, when counsel for the State will respond to Fitzgerald’s submissions.
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.
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 "inevitable" conclusion that he was guilty.
