‘Only an 18-minute period when he could have done it’

DEFENCE counsel in the murder trial of Joe O’Reilly warned the jury against being swayed by media attention to the case.

He said he wasn’t going to try to convince them O’Reilly was innocent, but said all he had to do was to “satisfy” them that a reasonable doubt existed.

He compared a reasonable doubt to one which might prevent someone from buying a particular house or sending their child to a certain school.

He told the jury that O’Reilly’s likeability shouldn’t influence their decision and that “it’s easy to do justice for someone you like”.

Referring to the amount of publicity the case has attracted, he said: “The one thing you can see is that since the death of Rachel O’Reilly, a torrent of media attention has been focused on this case.”

He said that for 40 or 50 years, the number of reporters and spectators in the courtroom has been “unparalleled”.

He said that although the publicity hasn’t been saying O’Reilly is guilty, the coverage has been “insidious, covert and hidden”. He added: “It’s entirely suggestive.”

And he urged the jury not to court popularity by finding O’Reilly guilty.

He said they do trust the jury to reach the verdict independent of outside influence but reminded them of other instances of miscarriages of justice when innocent people were convicted of crimes because of an atmosphere of horror.

He cited the Guildford Four, the Birmingham Six and Nora Wall as examples of this.

He again urged them to keep media reports out of their decision-making and to consider how they may have been “persuaded unconsciously” by them.

Referring to the emails between O’Reilly and his sister Ann, he said while the language in them was abusive, “he’s not the first person, and he’s not the last” to use such language when talking about their spouse from whom they want to separate.

He said this is the case the prosecution have put before them and “then out of the blue, it is suggested that he decided to murder his wife”.

He said it’s not surprising that O’Reilly used such abusive language about his wife in the emails. He said lawyers often say “the first casualty in a matrimonial case is the truth”, because of the way partners speak about one another.

He said these emails were from June and said “so what” if he used bad language to describe her.

He said the witness, John Austin, who gave evidence in the first week that O’Reilly told him he was going to leave his wife and wanted to rent an apartment in Balbriggan to be close to the children.

He said there was “something a bit odd” about a father who loves his children and kills his wife. “They are of course depriving their children of a mother,” he said. “That is a little bit odd,” he added.

Moving on to talk about the “opportunity” O’Reilly would have had to kill his wife, Mr Gageby said that there was only an 18-minute period in which he could have done it, from the time Ms O’Reilly’s car was seen passing Murphy’s Quarry at 9.41am to the time the suspect’s car was seen going away from the house at 9.59am.

“It’s still only 18 minutes. Everything has to be done in that,” he said.

He said the prosecution are suggesting: “This man darted home, killed his wife, and darted back.”

Referring to the prosecution’s belief that O’Reilly showered himself after the murder, he said it was obvious the bedroom was an “appalling scene of carnage” and that the perpetrator must have been covered in blood. However, he said there was no scientific basis to prove that the attacker had a shower. He said that if that had been the case, the forensic team should have noticed the bathroom was freshly scrubbed.

Referring to the evidence of Sgt Aaron Gormley who said O’Reilly told him he was “sorry” because he was “probably after messing it [the evidence at the murder scene]”, he said this was also taken out of context.

“Everybody was only too happy to take everything out of context,” he said.

Mr Gageby then moved to CCTV footage of the car the prosecution say is O’Reilly’s dark blue Fiat Marea estate.

He said the “theory” is that after O’Reilly killed his wife, he drove through Blake’s Cross and that this was captured on CCTV footage.

He said they already heard evidence of the vast amount of CCTV footage collected by gardaí all over Dublin, and asked why they thought no image of the car was captured south of Blake’s Cross.

He said that if their theory is correct, and that O’Reilly did travel from work in Bluebell, to his home in north Co Dublin and then back to the Broadstone Phibsboro bus garage, then surely there would be CCTV images of the car.

He also asked them to consider why there was no picture of the car turning into the garages from CCTV at the Maxol garage on Constitution Hill.

He told them the answer was because “he didn’t drive out” of the garage in the first place.

Referring to the evidence of image analyst, Mr Laws, he said: “I would have thought he threw more cold water on their [the prosecution’s] theories than light.”

He said Mr Laws himself said he couldn’t be sure there was a roof rack on the suspect car, as there was on O’Reilly’s own car.

Mr Gageby also called into question the mobile phone analysis, upon which he said the case was “heavily reliant”.

He said O’Reilly could be seen on CCTV footage talking on his mobile phone while going into work.

However, he said this call was not listed in mobile phone records and suggested the jury to take this into account when considering the import of the mobile phone analysis.

He said this is a case largely dependent on science and warned them against being “unquestioningly reliant” on the mobile phone records as evidence.

Returning to the subject of O’Reilly’s car, he said “in a country area, people notice things” and that someone would have noticed his car.

He also reminded the jury of the evidence of a number of witnesses who passed by the house around this time who knew the O’Reilly family but who didn’t see his car there.

He said the prosecution case based on “innuendo, suspicion and allegation and a little bit of other stuff mixed up in that” was “wholly circumstantial”.

“This is a case in which you are being asked to marry a large amount of suspicion with a little bit of science. Do you think it possible he could do such a radical thing if he did not want to lose custody of his children as to batter his wife to death?” he said.