Christy Walsh case
Belfast man wrongly convicted of possession of explosives
John Christopher "Christy" Walsh, from West Belfast, was convicted in 1991 by a Diplock Court of possessing explosives in connection with the conflict in Northern Ireland, and campaigned for 20 years to clear his name on the basis that his conviction was a miscarriage of justice. His case was referred to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission in 2000. When that appeal failed, he appealed again. In January 2002, his conviction was upheld even though the court acknowledged the possibility that procedural irregularities might have amounted to an interference with his right to a fair trial.
Following an unprecedented third appeal on the basis of new evidence, his conviction was overturned as unsafe on 16 March 2010. Walsh has been refused compensation for the conviction and his time spent in prison and is engaged in a campaign to reverse that decision and to draw attention to the alleged failings of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission.
In October 2012, Walsh made an application for a writ of coram nobis. His Honour Mr Justice Weatherup observed, "The Court of Appeal concluded that there was no ground on which a court of first instance could reopen its own decision other than for fraud. ...
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Christy Walsh case” as belfast man wrongly convicted of possession of explosives. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5113688. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1991, 2000, 2002 and 2010.
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This entry incorporates text from “Christy Walsh case” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.