A MAN jailed for the "one-punch" killing of his friend has failed in a bid to overturn his conviction.
The Court of Appeal rejected submissions Joseph Dorrian was wrongly found guilty of the manslaughter of Darren O'Neill based on flawed guidance to jurors about the law on self-defence.
Dorrian (25) claimed he felt under threat when the pair clashed at Tyrella Beach in June 2019.
Last year, Dorrian, from Lakeview in Crumlin, received a three-year sentence for the clash which claimed the life of Mr O'Neill (22).
Previous courts heard the friends got into a fight and Dorrian alleged he punched Mr O'Neill once in self-defence after being struck first. That single blow resulted in the victim dying two days later.
Dorrian initially told police he had been invited to punch Mr O'Neill, but later denied it. Despite insisting he had acted amid fear of being hit again, the jury found him guilty of manslaughter.
Appealing the conviction, defence lawyers challenged the judicial directions on dealing with allegations he had been afraid, and how that impacted on his self-defence case.
They argued the trial judge made a serious error by directing jurors to find Dorrian guilty if satisfied the deceased asked to be hit, because that would mean Dorrian could not have believed he was under attack.
Lady Chief Justice Dame Siobhan Keegan said: "Either the appellant used force against the deceased as a result of an invitation by the victim, in which case the force would not be necessary, or he hit the victim due to feeling under threat".
Jurors were made aware they had to assess the competing scenarios on the evidence, she said adding "in truth, the appellant had no proper explanation for resiling from his initial account to police at the scene".
"Therefore, this was a focused, targeted and contextualised direction."
She confirmed "the conviction is safe and we therefore dismiss this appeal".
