High-Profile Murder Verdict Given to Press Before Judge Reads It
In an unusual gaffe, the press was given copies of the 74-page verdict in a high-profile Irish murder trial by a court official today before the judge even had a chance to read it in court.
“Mr. Justice Gillen had not even sat down at Belfast Crown Court when photocopies of his full judgment were handed out to the dozens of reporters who had crammed into packed court number 12,” reports the London Times.
And this wasn’t the court’s only mistake: “Gordon Kerr, QC, for the prosecution, and Orlando Pownall, QC, for the defense, were not even allowed to see advance copies of the ruling, in an apparent breach of court protocol which many observers said has been unprecedented in the British legal history,” the newspaper writes.
The verdict in the 2005 murder of Robert McCartney outside a pub in Belfast, which was blamed on the Irish Republican Army, was not guilty: Gillen said that the rule of law required him to acquit Terence Davison, 51, of the 33-year-old’s beating and stabbing death because the evidence did not prove him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Davison and two co-defendants were also acquitted on lesser charges related to the attack on McCartney.
“I have no doubt that the investigation into this crime will continue and if new evidence emerges in connection with this murder no one, including for that matter even the accused in this trial, will be beyond the reach of potential prosecution,” the judge said.
