Double killer loses appeal over threat to burn prison officer’s home

A double killer who claimed records were “falsified” and a charge “made up” to cover up his alleged mistreatment in jail has failed in a bid to overturn his conviction for threatening to burn down a prison officer's home.

Stephen Penrose, who is aged in his 40s, was sentenced to two years imprisonment for threatening to damage the property of the prison officer at Cloverhill prison on 4 March 2016, having been convicted by unanimous jury verdict.

Detective Sergeant Sean Cosgrove told the trial in 2023 that Penrose told prison staff he knew where the officer lived and would pour petrol through their letterbox and burn their house down.

Penrose told the Court of Appeal on Monday that his right to a fair trial was breached because the state had “failed to seek out and produce” contemporary prison logbooks ahead of his trial.

“This is a case where the Garda and the Irish Prison Service hindered or refused assistance to my disclosure application, causing irretrievable damage to my defence,” he said.

“I believe this court has the right to receive fresh evidence. Failing to seek that out is to not hear this appeal fairly,” he added. “They falsified this document here and I ask that the original be brought before the court,” he said.

Kathleen McGillycuddy BL, for the State, said that Penrose had sought the material in a request for further disclosure after taking over his own defence during his trial in 2023.

“Initially we were told those logs were destroyed; that turned out not to be the case. Mr Penrose was told in Court 7, before the trial commenced, that those journal entries were in an archive, they were not indexed,” counsel said.

They had not been found at that point, but Penrose said he was “happy to proceed”, Ms McGillycuddy said.

“At the trial we made efforts to find the documents. Judge [Elva] Duffy explained that the journal entries may not come to hand; again Mr Penrose said he was happy to proceed,” she said.

Ms McGillycuddy said the journal entries ultimately “came to hand” on the day of Penrose’s sentencing, at which point Mr Penrose had claimed the entries were “falsified”.

She said Garda interview notes recorded Penrose as saying that he “didn’t make a threat, didn’t threaten to kill anyone, and he was letting off steam”.

“At trial, he moved on and stated he was being mistreated by the prison authorities; that he was assaulted,” she said “That night, he’d set fire to his cell, the sprinklers were activated, and he was left soaking wet in a freezing cold cell with the windows open, and [the appellant argued] that the threat was made up to cover up,” she said.

However, she added that the prison officers who testified at the trial had all given evidence that “no sprinkler went off”.

Penrose said that one witness “did give an indication that a fire alarm went off”. “When a fire alarm goes off, the sprinklers go off,” he said.

“If a sprinkler went off, which I said it did, the officer would have written in that box [in the journal],” Penrose said.

Before the judges rose to consider the appeal, Penrose said he had been “absent from the media” for some time and asked the judges to place an injunction on the press from reporting on the instant matter as he had other convictions under appeal.

Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy, sitting with Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy and Mr Justice Brian O’Moore, said the Court would make no order and that it was “a matter for the media”.

Delivering judgment on Monday afternoon, October 21, Justice McCarthy said the “unambiguously clear” evidence before the trial court was that the documents would not have recorded anything about a fire extinguisher going off or water seeping into the landing.

He added that if there had been “any consideration in writing” of what had been alleged it “would have been a serious matter had it not been available”.

“One might say once Mr Penrose decided to proceed, notwithstanding that this material was not available that is the end of the end of the matter. We are not minded to leave it like that,” he said.

“We have been furnished with the documents in question… on perusal, they say nothing which could have undermined the testimony of the prison officers to the effect that the document would not have contained what is suggested by Mr Penrose,” he said.

“It seems to us that having engaged with the material, there was no reasonable possibility of a material impact. Such a thing has simply not been established,” he added.

“We dismiss this appeal on all grounds,” he said.

Penrose had also claimed there was a failure to disclose CCTV which the State said had been taped over; that witnesses lied during his trial, and that he ought not have been charged with threatening to damage property after being arrested based on an alleged threat to kill.