As of close of business yesterday Eamonn Lillis had not lodged any appeal of his sentence or his conviction for manslaughter. This made the papers today because we’ve all become so used to seeing high profile appeals in murder and manslaughter cases. Finn Colclough’s appeal yesterday for example or the upcoming appeal of Sharon Collins and Essam Eid, the subjects of my book Devil in the Red Dress.
It was expected that Lillis would appeal, especially since his counsel Brendan Grehan SC, had asked for the jury to be discharged after they had been charged by Mr Justice Barry White. Appeals of convictions can only be taken on a legal matter since the jury’s decision cannot be questioned. Close of business day marked the latest time he could apply for an automatic appeal hearing. That doesn’t rule out an eventual appeal, it simply means it will be a lot harder to do so as he will first need to apply for leave to appeal with the Court of Criminal Appeal.
It’ll be interesting to see whether or not there is an eventual appeal. If not then Lillis will have the distinction of being one of the very few high profile convicts not to have appealed his sentence or conviction after pleading his innocence throughout his trial. It’s the usual codicil after a high profile trial.
I could understand why he wouldn’t appeal though. Throughout the trial he was extremely steadfast about his intention to shield his daughter from as much further stress as possible. Of course we shall never know exactly why an appeal isn’t taken, and at this stage one still might be, but it is an interesting addendum to what has been a fascinating trial.
It’s been a hectic start to the year. Since January 11th almost every waking hour has been taken up with the Eamonn Lillis trial. I’ve covered it for the Sunday Independent and for Hot Press. I’ve written about it here and on Twitter. I’m not the only one. Pretty much every journalist in Dublin who covers the courts has been totally obsessed with the lives of Eamonn Lillis, Celine Cawley and Jean Treacy.
It happens every time there’s a big trial, the kind where newsdesks devote daily double page spreads to each days evidence, the kind we’ve been having once or twice a year since the flood gates opened with the criminal extravaganza that was the Joe O’Reilly trial. I’m not getting into whether or not the media pay too much attention to big trials, after all it’s what I do for a living, but covering one like the Lillis trial is an all consuming experience.
I’ve covered courts on both sides of big trials. When the O’Reilly trial was going on I had the job of covering every other murder that took place in that three week period. It was a busy time, although you wouldn’t have known it from your daily paper. Every day of the O’Reilly trial there was at least one other murder trial going on. I covered all of them (luckily none of them actually ran at the same time as each other although there were one or two overlaps).
It’s a little surreal covering a trial when there’s something like the Joe Show going on next door. There were days when even the accused seemed more interest ted in what was going on on the other side of the Round Hall than the evidence that was coming up in his own trial. Maybe it’s because of the circumstances, or because I was still fairly new to the job, but I can still remember the names of the accused in each of those trials. It might also have been because all three trials were acquittals, which don’t happen that often.
There was the taxi driver’s son acquitted of murder after he had been the subject of an unprovoked attack while he was walking his dogs. Then there was the two traveller guys accused of attempting to murder another fella. When they were acquitted the chief prosecution witness was one of those waiting outside the courts who lifted the freed men cheering onto their shoulders. During that trial, the defence insisted the jury see a wall that featured heavily in the prosecution’s case so we all went on a junket to the estate. The locals all came out of their houses to see what on earth was going on and Mr Justice Paul Carney posed for photographs.
Then there was the trial where the chief prosecution witness seemed to know a lot more than he let on. Something the jury obviously picked up on as they acquitted the accused despite two days of particularly damning testimony from the witness.
I’ve been thinking about those weeks on and off this week because I suddenly realise that there were a lot of things I was supposed to be keeping an eye on that I’ve written about on this blog. Ann Burke for example, the 56-year-old mother from Laois, who was convicted of the manslaughter of her abusive husband before Christmas. I wrote about the trial here so I won’t recap but she was supposed to be sentenced during the Lillis trial. I noticed several people have arrived at this blog looking for information on the sentencing so I checked it out. As it turned out I didn’t miss it with all the Lillis circus. Her sentencing has been deferred until March 22nd so I’ll keep an eye out.
Another one that’s pending is the result of Finn Colclough’s appeal. Finn was convicted back in December 2008 of the manslaughter of Sean Nolan. The trial got a fair bit of attention, partly because it happened on Waterloo Road in posh Dublin 4 and partly because Finn’s mother Alix Gardener was a TV chef. I’ve written about it at length here as well so I won’t recap more than that. Anyway, the ruling was deferred before Christmas and as yet there’s been no word. Again I’ll write a post when there’s a judgement. It looks like it might be an interesting one.
Now that the dust has settled there’s time to catch up on all the stories I missed. I don’t think Lillis has gone away but at least there are no more crowds and things are getting more back to normal.
There wasn’t a sound as judge Barry White read out his judgement. Eamonn Lillis stood to attention, his eyes fixed on the judge, his chin tilted upwards in the nervously arrogant gesture he adopted each time the going got tough during his trial. Ultimately though the news wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
The court was not as full as it had been throughout the three week trial. Today and yesterday the throngs of public had been banished to the downstairs viewing room where they could watch proceedings on a live video feed. For once the Cawley family did not have shopping bags resting on the back of their bench and a press of bodies leaning over them as hearing aids struggled with the acoustics of the court.
Lillis’s friends and family sat, as they had throughout the trial in the second row to the side of the now empty jury box. His younger sister Carmel and friend Gerry Kennedy, who spoke in his defence at yesterday’s hearing, were able to talk briefly to the convicted man after his first night in custody. When he came into court, a few moments after 11 o’clock, he looked more relaxed than he had during the trial, as if the worst was over and all he was now waiting for was to know when it would finally end.
Judge White took his seat at 11.08 and Lillis got to his feet. The judgement was lengthy and considered. Judge White told Lillis that he he had at least had the decency to call the emergency services after he had injured his wife and had aided them in their attempts to save her but this, in his opinion was “the only decent action or actions you committed on that particular morning.”
He said that Lillis’s continuing lies, the changing and hiding of his clothes and the blaming of an innocent man were purely to conceal his own guilt and that he considered Lillis’s admissions at the start of the trial, principally that his story of a masked assailant was a complete fabrication, were merely self serving.
Judge White also said that he did not believe Lillis’s apology to the court yesterday. He said that a plea to manslaughter at an earlier stage in the investigation, even if it had been refused by the Director of Public Prosecutions, would have shown genuine contrition and remorse.
Lillis did not falter as the judge told him that considering the facts of the case and considering the lies and deceit he had practised the appropriate sentence for his crime was ten years. There was a slight gasp in the court room from Lillis’s family as the figure was mentioned. The Cawley family sat tensely as the judge continued his judgement, turning now to the mitigating factors he must take into account.
Judge White said that it was obvious Celine Cawley’s death had a devastating effect on people of all ages, from her 80-year-old father to her 17-year-old daughter as her sister Suzanna’s victim impact statement yesterday had shown. He said that the victim impact statement handed in on behalf of Mr Lillis’s daughter had shown strongly how a 16-year-old girl had changed into a hardened 17-year-old adult.
He said he accepted that Lillis’s actions had been out of character although he found this hard to reconcile with Lillis’s own account of the row with his wife, in which he shoved the brick at her and told her to “shove it where the sun doesn’t shine”.
However he said he also took into account the fact that the case had received considerable media attention and publicity and that this was likely to continue even after Lillis had served his time in prison. The final sentence he handed down was for seven years, reduced to 6 years and 11 months to take into account the time Lillis had served on remand.
Then he turned to the media. Looking at the three rows of journalists sitting in front of him, with others scattered around the court Barry White said that after reading the victim impact statements he thought that the media had “little or no respect for the privacy or dignity of the Cawley family” He continued “it’s also clear to me watching news bulletins that there has been a constant media scrum whenever you entered or left the building. I consider that to be an affront to human dignity.”
He asked the media to respect the privacy of the Cawley family from now on.
In the silence that followed defence counsel Brendan Grehan formally asked for leave to appeal and received the formal refusal. Lillis must first apply for leave to appeal with the Court of Criminal Appeal before being granted one.
Lillis was led away by the waiting prison officers. He will not be seen again until his release, if the press are as dogged as Judge White fears. Celine’s father James Cawley went over to Inspector Dave Dowling and the two men embraced. Mr Cawley was heard to say quietly “Thank God it’s all over now”.
Celine’s sister Suzanna went over to Lillis’s sister Carmel and handed her a small folded note. The two women shook hands and hugged, slightly awkwardly in the crowded court. Celine’s brother Chris had left after the sentence was delivered, following his wife’s sudden departure from the court.
Outside, the usual press scrum was a muted affair. The journalists stood to one side as the Cawley family stood for the waiting photographers. Then they moved in for Chris Cawley and Celine’s brother-in-law Andrew Coonan to speak.
After thanking their friends and neighbours and the gardai who conducted the investigation Chris Cawley broke down as he remembered his sister as a dynamic, kind, successful, fun loving, caring person. “She had a beautiful energy that lit up so many lives.”
Eamonn Lillis sat staring ahead, his finger crooked under his nose, rocking gently backwards and forwards as the sentence hearing got underway. As he had done throughout his trial he showed no emotion as the facts of the case were read out. He didn’t flinch as his lies were once again catalogued for judge, Mr Justice Barry White.
When the victim impact statement written by his sister-in-law was read to the court he sat impassively. Susanna Coonan said that the “good humoured, roguish, fun and compassionate” sister she had known had been “entirely deleted” from her mind and replaced by the image of her sister’s shaven head and the scared woman “slipping in blood and frost and fighting for her life on the patio of the house of her dreams.”
She said that one of the hardest things was the realisation that she would probably never know the truth about Celine’s final moments. “Was she in pain? was she conscious? Did she think about [her daughter]? Did she know she was dying?” She said that she had been with both her mother and sister when they had died from cancer and due to the care of the nursing staff their deaths were a “triumph over illness”. “For Celine and those of us who mourn her deeply, we were utterly deprived of any dignity, spirituality or peace”.
Ms Coonan said that Celine’s daughter and her 80-year-old father deserved to know the truth about her death. She said Lillis’s remorse was hard to credit. He had 13 months to “at least apologise to {his daughter} and my father. No such apology was forthcoming.”
In the first positive picture of Celine Cawley in her husband’s trial her sister described the devoted aunt and godmother, the “big kid” who got as much of a kick out of the remote control tractors and fluffy puppies as the children did. She spoke of the “stamp” Celine left on people’s lives. That on the second day of the trial her old maths teacher had been in court and never a day had gone by without old school friends and devoted colleagues attending proceedings.
Even prosecuting counsel Mary Ellen Ring seemed to have a catch in her throat as she read Ms Coonan’s closing words. “Our lives are enriched from knowing you”, then a quote from the Take That song “Rule the World” “All the stars are coming out tonight. They’re lighting up the sky tonight for you.”
Lillis was supported, as he had been throughout the trial by two old college friends. Gerry Kennedy told Mr Justice White that he would consider Eamonn Lillis one of his closest friends. He said he was a “gentle man, kind, considerate and a very, very good listener.” He said Lillis was “almost the last person in the world” he would have expected to be involved in such awful events.
Siobhan Cassidy had also gone to college with the convicted man. She told the judge she knew him as someone who had a great interest in English literature, the human spirit, film and poetry. She said he was mild mannered and courteous and she had never known him to be confrontational. “Quite the opposite.” She told the court this had been her opinion for the past 34 years and still was.
Speaking on behalf of his client, defence counsel Brendan Grehan told the court Lillis had loved his wife and would do so for the rest of his life. He still spoke of her in the present tense. He said Lillis was extremely sorry for the extreme hurt caused in particular for the lies told to the Cawley family. Mr Grehan said Lillis was keen to point out that his wife had been neither a bully nor a tyrant and was a loving wife and mother and a strong business woman.
Mr Justice White will consider the victim impact statements from both Ms Coonan and Mr Lillis’s daughter as well as the evidence of the case and submissions from both sides before he delivers his verdict in the morning.
The camera men shoved forward towards the front door of the Criminal Courts of Justice this evening. Eamonn Lillis had just been found guilty of the manslaughter of his wife Celine Cawley. The press had gathered outside the door in the hope that the Cawley family would say a few words but the convicted man was first on the scene.
As he came out of the doors the scrum pushed forward and the barrage of flashguns was blinding. He pushed through, as he had through the crowds of onlookers every day of his trial, his head lowered and his hands stuffed into his pockets. But he was now a guilty man, who will learn his punishment next Thursday, and the snappers were not going to let him get away. As he disappeared down the road they ran after him and his footsteps could not be heard over the snapping of the shutters.
The verdict had come at 6.25 after the jury had been deliberating for almost nine and a half hours. There had been a lot of false starts in the day, as the jury manager appeared with a request for a smoke break or a point of clarification but when he appeared at around ten past 6 the whole room could tell this was it.
The room filled quickly and the tension heightened. The families took their seats and Mr Lillis sat into the small box that looks suspiciously like a dock in the new courtrooms. He looked visibly nervous and was biting his lip as he waited for the judge. A couple of rows behind the jury box his family were also showing the stress of the three week trial.
Eventually Mr Justice Barry White took his seat and the jury came out. They looked tired after their three days of deliberation. The registrar asked the foreman if they had reached a decision on which at least ten of them were agreed. He said yes and handed over the issue paper.
There was a moment of bated breath as the registrar turned and unfolded the paper, reading it through for a moment before reading out the verdict. Mr Lillis was guilty of manslaughter. The foreman had also noted down which of the four possible reasons they had decided on for this result…that the prosecution had proved that the death of Celine Cawley was an unlawful killing but not that Mr Lillis had intended to kill her or to cause her harm.
Mr Lillis barely flinched as the verdict was read out. He sat, his head cocked, as he had for the majority of the more damning evidence in the trial. His family took the news with a slight look of relief…it could after all have been so much worse.
In the bench at the back of the courtroom where the Cawley family had sat throughout the trial, Celine’s niece wept openly beside her grandfather. Celine’s sister Susanne’s emotion only showed as they left the courtroom, the tears welling up as they headed to the offices of the Courts Service Victim Support.
They stayed hidden from sight until they finally came to be confronted by the wall of photographers. It was announced that no statement would be made until after the sentence had been handed out then posed with quiet dignity for the photograph. The press parted with minimum fuss as they headed towards the steps and they were left to leave unobstructed.
We will all gather at the courts next week to find out what will happen next. Until then Eamonn Lillis will sign on twice daily as he puts his affairs in order. He is now, as Judge White pointed out, a convict, even on bail.
You can’t rush a jury. It doesn’t matter what your deadline is or what you’ve got planned for the weekend, those twelve men and women will take as long as they’re going to take and not a second more or less.
The jury in the Eamonn Lillis trial spent today in their second day of deliberation. Every time they came out of their room every eye in court scanned their faces trying to read a sign, any sign of an impending decision. They had seemed very definite when they asked for those bits of evidence yesterday, or they definitely looked as if they had a verdict when they came in just then. And every time the expectation builds it’s disappointed. The jury will take as long as they take. How long? How long is a piece of string.
First thing this morning we listened back to part of Lillis’s evidence as they had requested. The jury sat with their eyes closed concentrating on every syllable as Mr Lillis’s voice echoed round the silent courtroom. The facility to play back evidence has been around since the new electronic recording replaced the traditional stenographers but now all the courts have this facility.
Then at almost ten past 12 they headed off to their room to resume their deliberations, armed with the recording of the 999 call and the suitcase full of bloody clothes. That’s when the waiting started in earnest.
An hour later they were back in the court to be sent off to their lunch. Time was they’d be bussed half way across Dublin for a hotel lunch, now the lunch on offer is prepared in-house and they have their own dining area.
With any jury wait the process starts to get tedious once it goes into the second day. We don’t have the jury’s distraction of actually deliberating so it’s a question of desultory conversation and sharing the papers. As the afternoon wore on the laughter had a slightly hysterical edge but there was no end in sight.
At 4.40 they came back to ask for a smoke break. Judge Barry White gave them the option of going home as he was planning on sending them home at 5.30. The foreman replied firmly that no, thank you, they’d like to get back. The heads on the press bench were all turned, scanning the faces again.
Once they’re sworn in they have to troop out for a nicotine fix as one although at least they don’t have to share a floor in a hotel any more. As soon as they had left the speculation went into overdrive. “Oh they definitely look like they’re close.” “I’d go further, they look like they’ve got a decision.” “They’re probably going out for a smoke instead of sleeping on it, they’ll come back with a verdict.”
The jury returned at 5 and immediately went back to their room. Everyone waited expectantly but nothing happened. And nothing continued to happen as the half hour ticked away.
So they’ve been sent to their beds for the second night. Tomorrow morning we’ll all be there again, peering at their faces and trying to read their minds. We won’t be successful, they’ll come back and surprise us when we’re not expecting them. That’s the way it always happens. It always does with juries.
The jury started their deliberations at 2.29 this afternoon. It’s only a matter of time now until Eamonn Lillis hears his fate and the Cawley family hear what will happen to the man accused of killing Celine Cawley.
Jury waits are always tedious. There’s never anything to do. Well that’s not strictly true. When the jury goes out is the moment when most of the press benches are galvanised into action and start seriously working on their final verdict copy. If you’re writing for a daily there are usually two or three versions of the story, one for each outcome. It’s not quite so labour intensive if you work for a Sunday paper (unless the verdict comes on a Saturday afternoon of course) but the final wrap is a massive task nonetheless.
So the cables snake over to the plug sockets on the now empty barristers bench, the sweet papers accumulate on the press benches and the quiet of the almost empty courtroom is filled with the rustling of notebook pages. For everyone else it’s a matter of waiting. It’s the first time there’s been a big wait in the new Criminal Courts of Justice and there’s been much discussion about whether the benches in the Four Courts were more or less arse numbing than the hard edged, pale wooden planks that cut off the circulation in the backs of your legs if you’re unfortunate to get yourself into the wrong position.
The format at this stage of a trial is always the same. The jury retires after the Judge’s charge and the prosecution and defence teams have the opportunity to tell the judge what they think he missed out or failed to emphasise. Then the jury get called back and the charge is updated. This process took rather a long time today. It was almost half past three when they were called back.
Mr Justice Barry White clarified a couple of legal and factual points as he had been asked to do and told the jury again that it was up to them alone to determine the facts in this case. He told them that they should not feel he was trying to impose his will on them or that he was subtly hinting at a preferred verdict. He neither carried the sword for the prosecution nor the shield for the defence, he told them.
So the jury resumed their deliberations and the waiting began again. In the Four Courts there is a constant creaking and knocking, as you would expect in an old building. You spend half the wait on tenterhooks every time you think you hear a knock on the door that leads to the jury room.
Things are different in the new court house. The floors are carpeted, the building new and creak free. Then there’s the jury wrangler, he’s not called that but you get the general idea. He’s there to look after the jury and so this afternoon, a little after four he appeared with a folded piece of paper.
The jury had a question.
Well actually they had a shopping list of items of evidence to help them in their deliberations. They wanted a tape of the 999 call Mr Lillis made and a tape recorder to play it, the statements Jean Treacy and Mr Lillis’s daughter gave to gardai, the Rip Curl bag gardai found in the attic at Rowan Hill, filled with Mr Lillis’s bloodstained clothes and the bloodstained clothes found in Mr Lillis’s bedroom. They also wanted the transcript of Mr Lillis’s evidence in court and the report given by Deputy State Pathologist Dr Michael Curtis.
It’s never a simple list with juries. Half the things they requested were off limits, others logistically complicated. The jury had asked for the original garda statements given by Jean Treacy and the daughter. They weren’t evidence so the request was denied, although they have the option of listening back to the evidence they gave in court. They also asked for the transcript of Mr Lillis’s evidence – something only the judge has access to.
So they were sent home for the night. Before we reconvene tomorrow morning the courts services will decide whether or not there is portable access to the 999 call or the recordings of the evidence given in court by Ms Treacy, Mr Lillis, his daughter and Dr Curtis. If the jury can’t listen back in their room we’ve a long day ahead of us while they listen back in the courtroom.
So the wait will continue tomorrow. Mr Lillis will have longer to wait to hear his fate.
Eamonn Lillis will know his fate by the end of the week. Today the jury in his trial for the murder of his wife Celine Cawley heard closing speeches from both prosecution and defence counsel and Judge, Mr Justice Barry White has started his charge.
They’re expected to start deliberating sometime tomorrow. They’ll have a lot to consider.
Prosecution counsel Mary Ellen Ring SC told the jury that Eamonn Lillis was an opportunistic killer who had seized on the chance to end an unhappy marriage when the row erupted with his wife on the morning of December 15th 2008. She told the jury that the only verdict they should come back with was guilty of murder.
The defence are looking for an acquittal. Defence counsel Brendan Grehan SC pointed out that the prosecution case simply didn’t hold up and told the jury that they needed to think about why a so-called opportunistic killer would only use moderate force when dealing the fatal blows, leaving Celine to suffocate to death.
The jury also have the option of manslaughter. Or rather the options. Judge White told them this afternoon that to come back with this verdict they would have to all agree on one of the possibilities.
The first was that Eamonn Lillis had acted in self defence when attacked by his wife with a brick. This would normally mean an acquittal but if the jury consider that he used excessive force the verdict is manslaughter.
The second option is that they think Eamonn Lillis is guilty of criminal negligence, in leaving his injured wife to die on the decking without calling the emergency services in time. This also carries a manslaughter verdict.
Then there’s the option of provocation. If the jury think that Eamonn Lillis was pushed to such an extent he snapped and wasn’t in control of his actions. Again this is manslaughter.
Judge White has been running through the evidence of the trial this afternoon. He pointed out that Mr Lillis lied about the masked burglar, even voluntarily embellishing his lie and clinging to it even when given several opportunities to come clean. He said Mr Lillis had also lied to gardai about what clothes he was wearing even when his own bloodstained clothes were found in a suitcase in the attic. It will be up to the jury whether they accept his comments.
Judge White also asked the jury whether they considered Mr Lillis’s affair with Jean Treacy to be a fling or something deeper. He pointed to the note found in Mr Lillis’s bedroom that talked about running out of time. He also highlighted mobile phone traffic between Mr Lillis and Ms Treacy which shows a marked increase of communication between November 2008 and December. He asked the jury whether they considered this indicative of a fling or something deeper.
Judge White will finish his charge in the morning and the jury will consider their verdict. We’ll all be waiting to see what they make of the case.
On his second day in the witness box Eamonn Lillis was talking fiction. He was being cross examined on the note gardai found in his bedroom, the note that sounded suspiciously like the story of his affair with Jean Treacy and the words of a man angst ridden at his place in a love triangle.
This was not the case, Mr Lillis was adamant. It was a treatment for a film script he had been working on. He had been working on a script for ages, he had notes and journals to prove it. His idea was based on a true story but it was fiction and the note was fiction too, even if it did use real names.
Mr Lillis proceeded to weave a rather chaotic account of his idea. It had been sparked by a project they had been filming for Irish Permanent, he said. The film crew had been in place filming a bank robbery and a passer by thought they were filming a reconstruction for Crime Line. That was the spark, he said. He had thought, wouldn’t it be a good story to have a film crew filming a robbery but they really were robbing the place.
What about the note, prosecution counsel Mary Ellen Ring wanted to know. That was based on the situation he found himself in but it was just fiction as well, he told her. He had woken one night at about three or four in the morning and the idea had come to him. It would have made a good simple script. He had left the note where he could find it to bring into the office and work on it there. It was about two characters who were running out of time…it bore no relation to persons living or dead, or at least to what had happened later.
Mr Lillis denies murdering his wife, Celine Cawley at their home in Howth on December 15th 2008. Today he denied hitting her three times with a brick. Ms Ring pointed out that two of the head wounds Celine had when she died were horizontal, as if made with a brick, rather than vertical as would be expected if she had hit her head of the living room window in a struggle as Mr Lillis had said. Mr Lillis replied emphatically “That’s not true.”
Today was the final day of evidence. Tomorrow will start with the closing speeches of prosecution and defence and then it will be up to Judge Barry White to summarise the evidence for the jury and charge them to begin their deliberations. The courtroom was packed today, as it has been every day of the trial. Dozens of members of the public squashed into the limited standing room in Court 19. One watcher had even brought his guide dog, which narrowly avoided being trampled as it lay patiently through the proceedings.
It’s been a while since there was a trial like this. And it will be a while until there’s another one. I sincerely hope the ghoulish curiosity of some of the more lascivious rubber neckers is sufficiently sated.
It’s been a busy couple of weeks but the Eamonn Lillis trial is entering it’s final stages. The defence have started going into evidence and once they’re done it’s all done bar the shouting – that is, the speeches by both sides and the judge’s summing up and charge of the jury. Then it’s all down to the six men and six women who have the ultimate task of passing judgement on whether or not Eamonn Lillis killed his wife.
It’s been the first big trial in the new court complex on Parkgate street. I’ve posted my view on the courts on this blog before and I’ve also written about the media facilities in the Evening Herald. But it’s not just the press that are unhappy.
It was one thing giving out about the courts in November when I first wrote about them. Back then the paint was still wet and they weren’t properly open. But over the past few weeks they’ve had a proper test run and have dealt with the public crush that accompanies a trial like the Eamonn Lillis one. They haven’t done well.
The biggest problems are the new courtrooms. Nobody seems to like them. The gardai don’t have room to put all the evidence they must bring with them every day of a trial and when the court is full there’s nowhere for the 20 or so witnesses they need in an average day to sit.
The journalists don’t like the fact the press bench is positioned so that surreptitious glances around the court are next to impossible and that there are no plug sockets in easy reach for power hungry laptops.
The courts are too hot and the layout makes easy movement around problematic. But the biggest problem, especially with a high profile trial, is the lack of a public gallery. I’ve written before about The Crowd, the gaggle of elderly tricoteuses who attend any kind of public blood letting with rapacious glee. With the Lillis trial they’ve descended on the court in their dozens.
Every morning they mass around the doors into the courtroom so that when the accused arrives he must push through the leering mob who giggle like sixties teenagers in the presence of a Beatle. In the past the bulk of these rubber neckers have been banished to the public gallery where they can view the proceedings without getting under foot.
The new courts have no public gallery, although an overflow facility is available in the jury assembly room on the ground floor, when it’s not being used, is provided. Of course no one wants to watch proceedings on a TV screen so no one takes up the option. Consequently they mass six deep at the back of the court. The family of the deceased, who are having to listen to traumatic evidence on a daily basis, also have to put up with shopping bags rested on their heads and hands resting heavily on the backs of their seats.
Every morning the mob gathers and the press must wait with them. When the doors are eventually opened there is an undignified scramble to get through like the first day of the sales. The courts security don’t appear to recognise that the press are any different from the day trippers and apart from the wonderful intervention of Courts Service PRO Gerry Curran on Friday when we were allowed to take our seats before the crush descended, the morning stampede adds considerable stress to the working day. I can only imagine what it’s like for the accused, his family and that of Celine Cawley.
It’s certainly not dignified for anyone, reducing them to a similar position as zoo animals, and it’s considerably worse in the new courts. It’ll be very interesting to see how things are managed in future trials and whether, in fact, this is a problem that can be solved at all.
The new courts are going to take a lot of getting used to.
