Prosecution’s case was undermined by video of protest

‘Inconsistencies’ between footage and some garda evidence may have swayed jury to clear defendants, writes Andrew Phelan

IT took 40 days to send the jurors in the Jobstown trial out to consider their verdicts. It took just three hours and ten minutes for them to return.

After a marathon hearing there was a lot to discuss in the jury room.

Without a fly-on-the-wall view, we can only speculate on how the seven men and four women of the jury came to their verdicts.

But by the end of the trial, the key issues that would be at the heart of their deliberations had come into sharp focus.

In particular, it was clear that disparities between the video footage of the protest and the evidence given by gardai had become potentially fatal fault lines in the prosecution’s case.

The State had accused Paul Murphy TD and five other men of falsely imprisoning then tanaiste Joan Burton and her adviser Karen O’Connell at an anti-water charges rally in Jobstown, Tallaght, in 2014.

The Solidarity TD, along with councillors Michael Murphy and Kieran Mahon, and three other men — Michael Banks, Frank Donaghy and Scott Masterson — all denied the charges.

The false imprisonment was alleged to have happened when the two women tried to leave the scene in two vehicles, firstly a garda Avensis, and then a Jeep.

Ms Burton had abuse, water-filled balloons and eggs hurled at her, while the Avensis was pelted with eggs. ‘Sitdown’ protests were staged, with gardai forming a human cordon to guide the women away.

It was the prosecution’s case that while none of the six men took part in any violence, they engaged in a joint enterprise to ‘trap’ the women and totally restrain their personal liberty for what amounted to around three hours.

The defence countered that there was never any false imprisonment — the defendants were exercising their rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.

Judge Melanie Greally said that if the jury did find the women had been falsely imprisoned, they had to be satisfied the six men did it intentionally, not just through recklessness.

However, “inconsistencies” between the video footage and some of the garda evidence emerged. All gardai strongly denied giving dishonest evidence, but Paul Murphy’s barrister characterised some of their accounts as “inaccurate, incomplete or misleading”.

One of most significant moments of the event was a “vote” that was taken by protesters about what to do with the garda Jeep as it was surrounded, with Ms Burton and Ms O’Connell inside.

Garda Jonathan Ryan said there was a “unanimous decision” by the crowd to keep the women trapped and that Paul Murphy “appeared very, very pleased with this”.

But footage of the vote showed Paul Murphy and Michael Murphy voting to march the Jeep out of the area, while the majority of the crowd voted to keep it there.

After considering all the evidence and arguments, the jury returned on Thursday with relatively swift, decisive and dramatic verdicts: not guilty on each count.