Unlawful warrant sees man acquitted

A Dublin man has been acquitted by direction of the trial judge of robbery and of falsely imprisoning a Brinks Allied employee, his mother, and a child.

Judge Desmond Hogan at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court had earlier ruled that gardaí searched the home of the accused and seized items using a type of warrant since deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Reginald Shannon said he was ordered by a group of masked men to get as much money as he could from a colleague making a cash drop while his mother and a child, who had been taken from his home, were driven around in a car for several hours before being released in south Dublin.

Stefan Saunders, aged 36, of Hazelbury Park, Clonee, had pleaded not guilty to robbery of €134,000 from Mr Shannon on January 4, 2010 and to falsely imprisoning him, his mother Angela Shannon, and a child at O’Connell Gardens on Bath Avenue on the same date.

Tara Burns, prosecuting, said in her opening speech this week that the prosecution case involved forensic evidence which they said would place Mr Saunders at a very minimum “in the thick of the planning” of the events.

Judge Hogan yesterday directed the jury to acquit Mr Saunders of all charges following a day of legal argument. He told them the issue of the warrants had “blown the prosecution case out of the water”.

He told the jury the prosecution case was built on an accumulation of different pieces of evidence which form a picture that the prosecution claims could be relied on beyond reasonable doubt that the accused was involved in the offence.

Judge Hogan said the evidence to date did not identify Mr Saunders, so the prosecution were reliant on forensic evidence which arose from seized items.

He said the search of Mr Saunders’ house took place by means of a warrant issued under Section 29 of the Offences Against the State Act 1939.

This section, which allows gardaí to enter a dwelling for the purpose of a search, was deemed unconstitutional in a Supreme Court decision in 2012.

He told the jury that, as a result, anything that flows from that warrant, such as items seized from the house, was collected on an incorrect and unlawful basis.

Sean Gillane, defending, told the jury that if the trial proceeded, Mr Saunders would have put forward a positive defence involving a named individual who had access to vehicles involved.