Tag: Central Criminal Court (Page 3 of 5)

Sometimes Even the Guilty Deserve a Moment of Pity

6th May 2010 / Abigail / 7 Comments

David Curran sat beside his co accused, his eyes darting around the rapidly filling courtroom. It was shortly before 3 o’clock and the jury had a verdict. Beside him, Sean Keogh got hugs from his mother and his grandmother, but Curran could not find a friendly face.

We had been told, when the jury went out after lunch with the news that they could now come to a majority verdict, that Judge Liam McKechnie was not intending to call them back until at least 4.30. Curran’s supporters, few though they were, had gone off secure in the knowledge that justice would be a long time coming. It was already the second day of waiting.

But, as so often happens when a jury is given the option of a majority verdict, the knock wasn’t long in coming. A little over half an hour later the news came and people poured back into the courtroom. The Keogh family filed into their seats, faces rigid with anticipation. The sister of one of the two slain men at the centre of the trial took her seat at the side of the court with her brother’s former boss beside her. She looked ahead grimly, waiting for whatever was to come. But Curran’s supporters didn’t show. His eyes kept their darting looking for the familiar face that didn’t arrive as his nervous rocking got faster. By the time the jury took their seats he had given up. Staring straight ahead, his hands clasped in front of his mouth.

At 19 years of age, he was alone when he was told that the jury had unanimously found him guilty of the murder of Polish mechanic Pawel Kalite and also of the murder of Marius Szwajkos by a majority of 11 to 1.

He stared straight ahead as Keogh beside him grinned at the news he had been acquitted on both counts. He will be sentenced for the assault of Mr Kalite later in the month. His family burst into unanimous tears as the verdicts were read out. Across the room Pawel’s sister glanced over coldly. She will have to wait until tomorrow to make her feelings known when victim impact statements will be read to the court as Curran is given the mandatory life sentences.

He has been convicted of two of the most shocking murders in recent years. Pawel Kalite & Marius Szwajkos died when they were stabbed in the head with a Philips screwdriver that Curran had taken from a stolen motorbike.

His defence was that he had thought one of them had stabbed his father but the jury did not accept that version of events. They agreed with the prosecution, that Curran had reacted to an earlier incident in which a young relation was in a tussle with Mr Kalite. The teenagers involved in that earlier row had called Curran, who arrived with Keogh and dealt out swift and fatal retribution.

It’s hard to feel sympathy for someone guilty of such a brutal crime but as he sat there surrounded by his legal team as the court emptied, tears running down his cheeks, it was difficult to not to feel a pang of basic empathy. He suddenly looked extremely young and the full weight of what he had done and the punishment he was facing had obviously just hit.

I’ve had criticism here in the past for showing too much sympathy for the accused in various trials but when you’re telling a story it’s sometimes a by product. I’ve worked in the courts for four years now. I’ve covered a lot of trials. I’ve sat and watched people accused of absolutely unpalatable cruelty to other human beings. But I’ll always try to view everyone with compassion. It’s not always possible. I’m certainly a lot more cynical since I started working here but sometimes, like today you see something that makes you forget for a moment the details on the charge sheet and look on the accused as just another human being.

I think Curran deserved the guilty verdicts. His crime was a terrible one, sudden and shocking in a way that’s not often seen. This case sparked outrage when it happened, there were candlelit vigils in Drimnagh at the scene. It’s the kind of case that makes you feel uncomfortable from the safety of your comfortable middle class life. A story of teens out of control, lives wasted before they had even properly begun, two men who had come to this country to make a better life slain after one of them stood up to the wrong kids. It doesn’t get any less terrible because the killer was upset but when the harsh veneer of feral adolescence is stripped away to show a flash of a frightened, vulnerable kid, the horror, if anything is worse.

Certainly as we all waited for the lift to the ground floor in the standard hanging around that follows a verdict in the hope of a useable quote, Curran’s sudden vulnerability was noted. The sight of him being comforted had left a slightly unpleasant after taste. It made him look so young to have done something so horrible.

Tomorrow we’ll gather again to hear the victim impact statements from the families of the two Polish men as Curran is handed his two life sentences. We’ll hear about the men who died in those few frenzied seconds on that Saturday evening and the effect their loss has had on their grieving families. There’ll be no sympathy for Curran then, and this now is only a moment of thought before I settle down to write my final wrap up of the trial for the Sunday Independent. But no matter how cynical I may become doing this job I never want to forget that everyone who enters that courtroom is a human being and all deserve some basic human compassion now and then.

Another Controversial Manslaughter Sentence

23rd March 2010 / Abigail / 2 Comments

Ann Burke, the Laois housewife convicted of killing her husband Pat in Ballybrittas before Christmas was sentenced today. I covered the trial and felt at the time that I wouldn’t be surprised if a non custodial sentence was given.

Today she was indeed given a five year suspended sentence. Outside the court her husband’s brother Tom made it abundantly clear that Pat Burke’s family did not agree with the manslaughter sentence. He also said that describing his brother as an abusive husband had been a further assassination to his good name.

Even the judge noted that this was a rather skewed view considering the absolute litany of abuse both Ms Burke and her children described. Her children stood by her throughout the trial and one of the images I’m left with after covering it is the sight of them clustered around her protectively whenever the court rose. I’ve covered a lot of trials that have dealt with the darker side of married life but this case was one of the most graphic and most upsetting.

Pat Burke’s death might have been undeniably brutal, his wife hit him 23 times over the head with a hammer, but the life he forced her and his children to lead was also fairly brutal. I know that grief can make any one of us gloss over the less palatable aspects of a loved one’s personality but seeking to wipe out the years of abuse Pat Burke was described as meting out on his wife and children doesn’t seem fair to those children and the woman who was by marriage part of that family.

Ann Burke’s story isn’t unique. Up to the point where she picked up the hammer it is played out behind closed doors in every county in Ireland. The men who terrorise their families should not be shielded by their relatives or by their community, they should be forced to stand to account for what they have done. Holding down a job does not make a good provider, a good father or a good husband.

But whatever I think about the fairness of this sentence there are bound to be some who disagree. The subject of manslaughter sentences is one I’ve discussed often and at length here. It’s rare to see a non custodial sentence imposed but by no means unheard of. At the other end of the scale you have people like Ronnie Dunbar who was sentenced to life for the manslaughter of Sligo teenager Melissa Mahon. In between you have the likes of Finn Colclough and Eamonn Lillis, who both received more usual sentences with ten years (reduced on appeal) and seven respectively.

Since the circumstances that tend to lead to a manslaughter verdict are varied in the extreme it makes sense that there should be such a variation in the sentences handed down. Ronnie Dunbar was a manipulative schemer who was, according to evidence given in the trial, having an affair with the 14-year-old Melissa. Ann Burke was a woman who had moved from an abusive childhood to a horrific marriage and eventually snapped. I’m not saying it’s ever right to take another life but in her case it was probably understandable – certainly at least one of her children thinks so.

Sentences perceived to be on the lighter end of the scale are always the ones that provoke the most controversy. But the real issue is that the sentences that are the norm, those that work out between 6 and 10 years, stick in the throat as a suitable punishment for taking another’s life. It’s the same issue seen time and time again in rape and incest cases, where the sentences handed down simply do not seem to fit the crime.

It’s a very complex issue. Several Central Criminal Court judges have been very vocal about their feelings of their hands tied by the Court of Criminal Appeal. They will refuse to hand down a truly punitive sentence because of the likelihood of it being reduced on appeal. Even without the Court of Criminal Appeal though there are issues that reduce the majority of sentences by far more than you would guess. Chronic overcrowding in many of the country’s jails mean that prisoners are routinely released early and it’s written into Irish law that everyone convicted on a crime has an automatic one quarter off their sentence, a juicy carrot intended to encourage better behaviour in in jail.

Judges here do not have the option to stipulate a minimum time to be served, as they can with a life sentence in the UK. If sentences are going to change, then there’s a lot that needs to change within the system as a whole.

Having said that, I think today’s sentence was a very merciful sentence. Ann Burke will have to life forever with what she did. She didn’t need prison walls to underline that.

No Sign of an Appeal from Lillis

27th February 2010 / Abigail / 3 Comments

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.

And We’re Back to The Subject of Sentences

7th February 2010 / Abigail / 0 Comments

No this isn’t a writing related post, I’m not talking those kind of sentences. I’m talking about the sentences handed down by Irish courts, the Central Criminal Court in particular and Eamonn Lillis’s sentence to be specific.

Since he was given seven years on Friday the papers and the airwaves have been full of condemnation of judge Barry White’s sentence. I agree that seven years, or six years and eleven months to be precise, isn’t a lot for the taking of a human life but it’s not an unusual length for a manslaughter sentence in the Irish courts.

I’ve written here before about the need for more severe minimum sentences for crimes like manslaughter and rape but it’s an ongoing problem.

When I was asked on Twitter what I thought the sentence was going to be on Friday morning I said that I thought it would be in the area of seven to ten years. I was going by what I’d seen in previous trials and knowledge of the judge involved. As it turned out Mr Justice White said that he considered the correct sentence to be ten years, but reduced it on considering mitigating factors – chief of which appeared to be the level of media scrutiny Lillis can expect when he gets out of jail.

I’m not going near the whole media as mitigation thing. We do our job and Eamonn Lillis, or for that matter Jean Treacy, would not have been of interest if he hadn’t killed his wife. That’s the way it works. Newspapers wouldn’t waste the ink if stories like this didn’t sell papers. While I’ll admit that some of my colleagues might fan the flames of interest quite strenuously, they, or for that matter myself, would not be concerned with this kind of story if it didn’t pay the bills. As a species we are fascinated with our own kind. Crime allows us greater access to the workings of people’s lives and minds than we get in the normal paths of our daily lives. But I’m going off the point, this post is about sentences.

A lot of people are saying that Eamonn Lillis got what is perceived as a light sentence because he is rich. His route through life might have been eased by money but when it comes to the courts it generally makes very little difference. I’ve seen people at both ends of the social spectrum have the book thrown at them, for different reasons and I’ve seen sympathy shown just as diversely.

Finn Colclough, from Waterloo Road in Dublin, was given ten years for the manslaughter of Sean Nolan but it’s not just those with posh addresses. In April 2008 21-year-old Limerick student Jody Buston was sentenced to a mere 6 years for stabbing a pensioner in the heart after wandering into his house and mistaking the old man for a ghost. The year before three Limerick teenagers who had intentionally run over apprentice electrician Darren Coughlan after mistaking him for someone else were given a maximum of seven years. Finally in November last year the first person to be convicted in the new criminal courts complex at Parkgate Street was sentenced to ten years for stabbing a man outside a Galway pub.

If sentences are too short in the Irish court system it’s generally not due to some partiality of judges or an old boys club of partiality in terms of the accused, it’s because that’s the way the law is. It’s even worse when it comes to rapes. I’ve written here before about the Court of Criminal Appeal overturning the life sentence handed down to Philip Sullivan who raped two small boys. It’s a problem throughout the system and one, certainly that needs to be changed.

But shouting about it because of perceived social inequality is missing the point and allowing for the wider issue to be ignored. Eamonn Lillis didn’t get seven years because he’s a millionaire, he got it because that was what he was always going to get if convicted of manslaughter. The fault is with the system on this one, not the individual judges.

The Sentence is Finally Given

5th February 2010 / Abigail / 0 Comments

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.”

In Memory of a Sister Lost

4th February 2010 / Abigail / 1 Comment

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 Men Who Kill Their Wives

1st February 2010 / Abigail / 3 Comments

It’s been a couple of day since Eamonn Lillis was convicted. Even though I’ve written on the trial here, on Twitter and in both the Sunday Independent and Hot Press I’ve been glued to the papers over the past few days like everyone else.

With a high profile trial like this, the evidence tends to pass in something of a blur. The packed courtroom, massive press presence and all the attendant pressures of covering a high profile trial tends to mean that you are fixated with your own copy and nothing else. It’s only once the verdict is in you can really sit back and see what your colleagues made of the whole thing.

Eamonn Lillis is the latest mild mannered, butter wouldn’t melt man to be sentenced for killing their wives. He joins the likes of Brian Kearney and David Bourke as a man who others thought to be meek and sweet yet still managed to brutally kill their wives when the marriage didn’t work out. Granted Lillis does stand apart in this comparison as having been convicted of the lesser crime of manslaughter, even though the jury dismissed the options of self defence or provocation in their verdict.

I sat and watched Lillis every day of his trial, just as I had watched, Kearney and Bourke before him, as the brutal death of his wife was laid in front of the court. I listened to the lies he told gardai, and very possibly the lies he told the court – his story of a slapstick death worthy of silent movie comedy in which he was utterly blameless obviously failed to win over the jury who convicted him of manslaughter after 9 and a half hours of deliberation.

There’s been a lot of discussion about the significance of the jury’s verdict in this case, the fact the six man and six women arrived at the majority verdict of manslaughter because the prosecution failed to prove the intent necessary for murder. They had not found him guilty of murder. They had rejected an acquittal. They had also been very particular in their choice of manslaughter. This was a complicated case. They had a total of six options open to them but they picked that one. They didn’t think he had been over enthusiastic in his self defence, they didn’t think he had been provoked and they didn’t think he had taken the passive option of copping the extent of his wife’s injuries but leaving her callously to die.

The option the jury chose was essentially “not proven”. There’s an option open to Scottish juries of “not proven”. It means that the person walks free but the jury are not totally convinced of his or her innocence. The prosecution failed to prove their case. That’s essentially what happened here. The jury in the Eamonn Lillis case decided the prosecution failed to prove the legal definition of murder, that intent must be present.

It would have been difficult to find intent without taking a leap of faith since there was no reliable account of Celine Cawley’s death. Her husband had lied from beginning to end and even his account from the witness box failed to convince the jury (or they would have acquitted him as acting in pure, justifiable self defence.)

Yet there are those who are acting as if Lillis was in some way a victim of all this. Despite the fact he is the latest Dublin wife killer and has been convicted in a court of law, there are those who whisper that maybe he was poorly treated. This man, who couldn’t stop dropping the designer names when answering garda questions about his wife’s death, who had entered into a sordid affair with a younger woman, who was responsible for his wife’s death and then tried to frame an innocent man for murder is a victim?

What about his wife?

She died at the age of 46, a brutal, sudden death on an ordinary Monday morning. Then during the trial she was subjected to another attack as her character was savaged by both sides in court. Celine Cawley was a strong woman, a formidable business woman and undoubtedly wore the trousers in her marriage to a much weaker man but that really doesn’t make her a bad person. She didn’t kill anyone, she was simply successful in business and had a dominant personality. There were a lot of different descriptions of Celine in the weekend papers but enough to suggest a human being with different sides.

Just because someone is strong willed does not mean in any way they deserve to die. Eamonn Lillis was not a worm that turned, but rather a lap dog buoyed up by the lust of a younger woman who fatally bit the hand that fed him. I might be using a rather provocative turn of phrase here but I’ve seen other men who came across as meek and mild who’ve nevertheless managed to kill. Eamonn Lillis isn’t the victim here. He killed someone and has been convicted in a court of law. If his marriage was unhappy he could always have walked. Violence is never, ever the answer.

The saddest thing about this trial is that Eamonn Lillis won’t be the last meek wife killer to pass through the Irish courts. And with cases like this the victim of their aggression is often in some way portrayed as the aggressor, or at the very least the catalyst. There are hundreds upon thousands of mild mannered men who manage not to kill their bossy, over bearing partners. Those who do kill deserve to pay.

Failure to Prove Intent

29th January 2010 / Abigail / 1 Comment

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.

And Still We Wait…

28th January 2010 / Abigail / 0 Comments

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 Waiting Begins

27th January 2010 / Abigail / 0 Comments

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.

The Books

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