Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Hutch & Dowdall tapes admissible says lawyer
Murder trial told defence using issue to place ‘cloud’ over case
BUGGED conversations between murder accused Gerard “The Monk” Hutch and an ex-sinn Fein councillor are admissible in evidence, the Special Criminal Court has heard in submissions.
Sean Gillane, for the Director of Public Prosecutions, said an audio surveillance device is “simply an inanimate movable item”.
He added any issue about where the device travelled to is “a cloud” which the defence has placed over the case.
Hutch, 59, denies the murder of David Byrne, 33, during a boxing weigh-in at the Regency Hotel on February 5, 2016.
The defence is objecting to the admissibility of almost eight hours of the contents of a 10-hour audio recording of conversations between Hutch and former councillor Jonathan Dowdall captured by a Garda bugging device on March 7, 2016.
Hutch’s defence barrister, Brendan Grehan argued Dowdall’s jeep was outside the State from 3.10pm to 10.50pm that day, when he allegedly drove the two men to Northern Ireland to meet republicans.
However, Mr Gillane told the Dublin trial yesterday that once a surveillance device is placed and retrieved lawfully on a car within this jurisdiction, “then it does not matter a damn where the vehicle was in the meantime”.
He added: “No question of extraterritoriality in truth arises.”
Counsel said the defence’s contention was that as soon as one reaches the border of the Carrickdale Hotel that “all bets are off and the bug doesn’t work”. The trial has heard that the jeep crossed the border at the Carrickdale Hotel in Dundalk, Co Louth, at 3.12pm on March 7, crossing back into the Republic at 10.50pm that night at Aughnacloy in Co Monaghan.
On Friday, Mr Grehan told the non-jury court that “on its face” there had been an illegal operation of the Criminal Justice Surveillance Act 2009.
He will respond in full today to Mr Gillane’s submissions before the three judges rule on the admissibility of the contents of the recorded conversations having regard to the extraterritoriality issue.