Judge addresses jury in final stage of cocaine trial

THE judge in the eight-week €440 million cocaine trial stood in front of the jury with a length of rope in his hands to explain the circumstantial evidence on which the prosecution is based.

As the trial of the three Englishmen at Cork Circuit Criminal enters its final stage with the judge’s address to the jury, Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin stood at one stage during his address and showed the jurors a piece of blue rope less than a metre long.

At one end it was frayed, at the other the strands were entwined as an intact piece of rope.