Two stab wounds, a life sentence and every appeal rejected: the Przemyslaw Trebacz case

Polish national Przemyslaw Trebacz was convicted of murdering Costel Catalin Cretu in a Cavan apartment. The jury rejected his claim of self-defence, the Court of Appeal dismissed every ground he raised, and the Supreme Court refused to hear a further appeal.

Published 26 July 2026 · Remigration Ireland case ledger

Murder10–2 majority verdict

LifeMandatory sentence

Appeals closedCourt of Appeal dismissed; Supreme Court leave refused

~€1.232mConservative prison-space benchmark since sentence

This case is not an allegation and the result is not in doubt. A jury convicted Trebacz of murder in December 2013. The Court of Appeal later described the prosecution case as “very strong”, held that there was clearly sufficient evidence to convict, and found no reason to consider the trial unfair or the verdict unsafe.

The fatal attack in Connolly Court

Shortly after 11pm on 13 October 2012, Trebacz travelled by taxi with two other men to 2 Connolly Court, Connolly Street, Cavan. One man left before the violence. The taxi driver testified that he heard a reference to a “Soviet attack”, saw Trebacz carrying something solid concealed in a sock, and watched him kick through the building door before entering with the remaining man. CCTV showed Trebacz approaching with a long object in his left hand.

Costel Catalin Cretu was inside the apartment with two women. He received two stab wounds, one to the chest and one to the back, and died at the scene. The State Pathologist's evidence was that the deeply penetrating wound to the front of his chest was fatal.

The prosecution said Trebacz had gone to the apartment to carry out a robbery and had brought the weapon. Trebacz admitted kicking in the door and stabbing Cretu during a struggle, but denied bringing a knife and claimed self-defence. His lawyers also raised provocation. Those were trial positions, not separate convictions or findings: the adjudicated offences were murder and criminal damage.

A majority murder verdict and mandatory life

Trebacz pleaded guilty to criminal damage to the door but not guilty to murder. On 18 December 2013, after almost ten hours of deliberation, the Central Criminal Court jury returned a 10–2 majority verdict convicting him of Cretu's murder. A majority verdict is a lawful conviction, but it should not be misreported as unanimous.

Mr Justice Barry White imposed the mandatory life sentence on 17 February 2014. Contemporary sentencing coverage says the judge suspended a three-year term for the criminal-damage offence. That report does not establish that the term was consecutive, and this file does not describe it that way. It also records that the defence asked to have the life sentence backdated to 14 October 2012; the located report does not say whether that request was granted, so the cost calculation below begins at the confirmed sentence date.

The prior record reported to the court

The sentencing hearing did not present Trebacz as a man with an entirely clean record. The Irish Examiner reported that he had “a number of previous convictions” in Cavan and minor offences in Poland that had been dealt with by fines.

The published account does not give the number, offence names, dates or sentences for the Cavan convictions, or specify the Polish offences. That gap cannot honestly be filled by guesswork or by attaching another same-name court report without conclusive identity evidence. The exact public claim is therefore limited: prior convictions in Cavan and minor fined offences in Poland were disclosed at sentence, but the available report did not itemise them.

Every Court of Appeal ground failed

Trebacz challenged the murder conviction on a long list of grounds. He attacked the reliability of a central witness, the trial judge's warnings and directions, the Garda investigation, the sufficiency of the evidence, the treatment of his own alleged lies, the presentation of the defence case and repeated references to the phrase “Soviet attack”.

On 21 February 2019, the Court of Appeal dismissed every ground in DPP v Trebacz [2019] IECA 128. The court acknowledged serious attacks on the principal witness's credibility, but examined the case as a whole. It held that the prosecution case was very strong, that sufficient evidence supported the conviction and that none of the complaints, individually or collectively, cast doubt on the trial's fairness or the verdict's safety.

A published case-law account records that the Supreme Court refused Trebacz leave for a further appeal on 20 December 2019 in DPP v Trebacz [2019] IESCDET 301. Refusal of leave is not a fresh murder verdict; it means the proposed further appeal did not pass the constitutional gateway. The Court of Appeal judgment and the original conviction remained undisturbed.

Case chronology

Before October 2012: Trebacz is living in Cavan. His later sentencing hearing records previous Cavan convictions and minor Polish offences dealt with by fines, without itemising them.
13–14 October 2012: Costel Catalin Cretu is stabbed in the chest and back at Connolly Court and dies at the scene. Trebacz admits damaging the building door.
18 December 2013: A Central Criminal Court jury convicts Trebacz of murder by a 10–2 majority after almost ten hours of deliberation.
17 February 2014: The court imposes the mandatory life sentence and a suspended three-year term for criminal damage.
21 February 2019: The Court of Appeal dismisses every conviction ground in DPP v Trebacz [2019] IECA 128.
20 December 2019: The Supreme Court refuses leave for a further appeal in DPP v Trebacz [2019] IESCDET 301.

What can honestly be said about the taxpayer cost

The Irish Prison Service reported an average annual cost of €99,072 per available staffed prison space for 2024, excluding capital expenditure. Applied as a flat benchmark from the confirmed sentence date of 17 February 2014 to 26 July 2026, 4,542 days equals about 12.436 years, or approximately €1,232,017.

That is an indicative system benchmark, not a prisoner-specific invoice. It applies one recent annual average retrospectively across years in which actual prison costs varied. It excludes pre-sentence custody, specified capital expenditure, Garda investigation, forensic work, prosecution, courts, legal aid and two appellate processes. It is presented to show scale, not false precision.

A life sentence has no fixed release date, so there is no defensible lifetime total. Irish law permits a life-sentenced prisoner to seek parole after the statutory qualifying period, but eligibility is not release and the Parole Board does not automatically grant an application. No reliable source located for this file establishes that Trebacz has been paroled, released or transferred.

What the record does—and does not—establish

The record establishes Trebacz's Polish nationality, murder conviction, mandatory life sentence, criminal-damage conviction, disclosed prior record and failed appellate challenges. It does not establish the full schedule of his earlier convictions. It also does not support claims that he sought asylum, was unlawfully resident, was served with a deportation order or was removed from Ireland.

Polish nationality should not be turned into an invented immigration history. Poland is an EU member state, and the legal rules governing EU citizens are not the same as those applying to non-EU nationals. The accountability case here rests on proved facts: a man with prior offending disclosed to the court killed Costel Catalin Cretu, received Ireland's mandatory punishment for murder and then used every available appellate route without overturning the jury's verdict.