Judge warns jury over coverage

A JUDGE yesterday warned the jury in the trial of man accused of murdering a Cork schoolboy about the extraordinary inaccuracies in media coverage.

Wayne O’Donoghue, aged 21, is charged with the murder of 11-year-old Robert Holohan on January 4 at his home in Ballyedmond, Midleton, in Co Cork.

At the Central Criminal Court, Judge Paul Carney warned the jury that they must try the case only on the basis of the evidence presented in court.

“The only people who are present in the trial from beginning to end and hear every word of it are the 12 of you, myself and the accused man,” he said.

“You must try the case strictly on evidence as heard by us in the court.”

O’Donoghue has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Robert Holohan but guilty of manslaughter.

The body of the schoolboy was found dumped near an isolated beach eight days after he disappeared while playing with his bike outside his home in Midleton.

Judge Carney made his intervention following a discussion with O’Donoghue’s legal team.

He said there had been saturation coverage of the first day of the trial yesterday.

“There have been some extraordinary inaccuracies coming across,” he said.

He said this included innocuous examples such as a report which stated that O’Donoghue had been arraigned after the swearing in of the jury, when it had been the other way round.

“There are many more examples I’m not going to go into,” he said.

Judge Carney later told the jury that both legal teams had indicated to him they would be bringing a motion for contempt of court against the editor of one national newspaper over the coverage of the case.

He also read out a section of the transcript of the opening day of the trial to counter what O’Donoghue’s legal team said was the spin being put on it.

In the transcript, prosecuting Counsel Shane Murphy said O’Donoghue went to his garden shed, poured petrol into a Coke bottle and decided to return to Robert’s body at Inch Beach to remove the plastic bags and burn them.

When O’Donoghue eventually found the plastic bag covering Robert’s body, he poured petrol on it and tried to set it on fire. It partially lit.