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.

The judge showed them this to illustrate the principle of circumstantial evidence — on which the prosecution case is based.

“If the State case remains in strands or threads it is not strong enough, if you go to the other side you have something of strength, something of unity, something you can rely on,” the judge said.

It has emerged that the jury will not be sent out to consider their verdicts in the case until Monday morning.

Joseph Daly, of 9 Carisbrook Avenue, Bexley, Kent; Perry Wharrie, aged 48, of 60 Pryles Lane, Essex, England; and Martin Wanden, aged 45, who is also English but has no fixed abode all deny charges including possession of cocaine for sale or supply when its street value exceeded €13,000 on July 2, at Dunlough Bay, Mizen, Goleen, Co Cork.

The judge told the jury of nine men and two women (one woman was released from the jury a fortnight ago) that the three accused were presumed innocent and they did not have to give evidence as it was a matter for the prosecution to establish a case against each of them.

“If there is a reasonable doubt you must acquit,” he said.

Referring to evidence of passports in aliases held by Wharrie and Wanden, Judge Ó Donnabháin said to the jury: “You have to be careful with passports. Just because a person has a false passport or two you cannot conclude that they are in drug dealing or drug possession. Of course you can take it into consideration.”

The judge also warned the jury about the various names of other people not before the court, described by the prosecution as being involved in a plan to import drugs: “There is mention of others, Michael Daly, Charlie Goldie, Big Al or Small Ned. It doesn’t matter. None of these people is before the court. You are not here to decide if Charlie Goldie exists or not, you are here to decide if those three men [the accused in the case] are guilty or not guilty.”

The jury would also have to decide on the issue of whether one or all of the accused were part of a plan to bring in drugs, or, as the judge asked, “were they unlucky, were they just in the wrong place in the wrong time?”.

The judge will continue his address to the jury today.