Collapse of rape trial over ‘prejudicial reportage’

A RAPE trial has collapsed due to an allegedly prejudicial newspaper report which linked the case to the ongoing debate around the fairness of rape trials.

The trial involved a Dublin defendant accused of raping a woman he met on a night out in 2015. It had run for six days and was at the closing stages, with the jury sent out just last Friday to begin deliberations.

Defence lawyers told the Central Criminal Court that on Saturday a comment piece appeared in the Irish Independent newspaper which suggested implicitly that he was guilty.

Acceding to an application to discharge the jury, Judge Paul McDermott said that while people are entitled to have views about these matters, it was unacceptable to juxtapose an ongoing trial with those views and other cases with a level of notoriety. Judge McDermott said that the ‘unprecedented’ media coverage included references that a fair trial was not being conducted.

He told the jury that it was unacceptable that a trial was subjected to such comment and that the claim was plainly wrong. He said there was an implicit criticism of mounting a defence on behalf of an accused and this was the fundamental core of the right to a fair trial. Judge McDermott said the comment piece about rape trials was juxtaposed with facts from the trial before the court. He said the publication appeared to involve contempt, but there was a ‘whiff of scandalising the court as well’.

Defence counsel Anne-Marie Lawlor said another article described the accused was described as jiggling his foot ‘in agitation’. She said these ‘value judgments’ amounted to a portrayal of her client as shifty.

The judge said as a result of the publication, both the complainant and the defendant would have to await a potential retrial.