O'Reilly defence gives closing arguments

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

In his closing speech, defence counsel, Mr Patrick Gageby SC, urged the jury not to court popularity by finding Mr O'Reilly guilty.

He said he was not going to try to convince them Mr O'Reilly was innocent, but said all he had to do was to "satisfy" them that a reasonable doubt existed.

He said the only requirement for them to reach a verdict of "not guilty" is that they should have a "reasonable doubt" about Mr O'Reilly's guilt and if so, they must acquit him.

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 also reminded the jury that the verdict they reach is "irreversible".

"You can't phone up afterwards and say: 'Nah, I shouldn't have gone along with that.' And what you do stays for all time. No one can say you were wrong."

He told the jury that Mr O'Reilly's likeability should not influence their decision and that "it's easy to do justice for someone if you like".

He asked them to ask themselves "if the accused in this case was not a man who was having an affair", and had not used bad language when describing her, whether it "would be a lot easier to given him the benefit of the doubt?"

"One thing is clear in this case, is that the prosecution has sought to bring in as much discrediting conduct as it can, and as is relevant but much of what they did bring in, we say is irrelevant."

"We're not looking in moral judgement in this case. This is not a court of morality, this is a court of Law," he added.

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 we are all "utterly" aware of it and that it "puts undue pressure" the trial.

He told them the sheer number of people in court puts pressure on them as they might start to think about what other people hope the verdict to be.

"You might ask what verdict does the press want in this case. And what will sell more papers?"

"I think you know what that answer to that is."

He said that although the publicity has not been saying Mr O'Reilly is guilty, the coverage has been "insidious, covert and hidden. It's entirely suggestive."

"You know the verdict the press desire."

He urged the jury not to court popularity by finding Mr O'Reilly guilty.

"Do you know that the most difficult thing to do in the world is to be unpopular?" he said.

He said politicians "thrive" on unpopularity but warned that for judges and jurors, "that's a very different thing".

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.

"We have to be careful ourselves not to get sucked into something like that," he said.

Referring to the Nora Wall case, which happened in the same court, he said that was an example of a case being tried on "belief, without any reference to truth".

He explained this case was shortly after the a television series which uncovered widespread abuse in industrial schools.

He said what all these cases had in common was an "undercurrent of fear".

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.

"Popularity is not an attribute for justice," he said. "Judges make unpopular decisions. You are 11 judges in this case."

Referring to the e-mails between Mr 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.

Similarly, referring to the loving language Mr O'Reilly used in texts to his lover Nikki Pelley, he said: "What do you expect him to say? 'I'd like you for sex', or something like that?"

He said Mr O'Reilly "is a man who has never been in trouble before", and that he was having an affair.

"We're not talking about wife beating," he said.

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 is not surprising that Mr O'Reilly used such abusive language about his wife in the e-mails.

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 e-mails were from June and said "so what" if he used bad language to describe her.

"He used bad language," he said. "So what? Where's the homicide?"

He said the witness, John Austin, who gave evidence in the first week that Mr 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.

"In this context, anyone who has an affair is in the firing line for murder."

Moving on to talk about the "opportunity" Mr 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 Mrs O'Reilly's car was seen passing Murphy's Quarry at 9.41am to the time the suspect 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."

"You have to decide how all of that stacks up, if it does," he said.

He asked the jury to consider the danger of Mr O'Reilly bumping into his wife at the roundabout.

Referring to the prosecution's belief that Mr 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.

"There's not one sausage of evidence from anybody in the forensic science lab," he said. "This is mere speculation by the prosecution."

He also reminded the jury of forensic scientist, Dr Diane Daly's evidence which said Rachel O'Reilly suffered a "sustained" attack.

"'Sustained' to me suggests a passage of time," he said.

He said there was no blood found on Mr O'Reilly's clothes or his car, and that the only bit of blood found was on his boot.

However, he said this is not surprising considering he was at the murder scene with other people after her body was found. He also reminded the jury that blood was found on the shoe of Rachel's mother, Mrs Rose Callaly.

Similarly, he said there was blood on Rachel's friend, Jackie O'Connor, a nurse, who tried to resuscitate her.

Referring to the evidence of Sgt Aaron Gormley who said Mr 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.

He reminded the jury that another witness, Sarah Harmon, told them it was possible she asked had asked Mr O'Reilly to move a box of books at the murder scene.

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

He said the "theory" is that after Mr 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 referred to the absence of this image as "the big white elephant" in the prosecution's case.

He said that if their theory is correct, and that Mr 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.

"What goes up, must come down," he said.

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 could not be sure there was a roof rack on the suspect car, as there was on Mr O'Reilly's own car.

But he said Mr Laws evidence was: "a matter for you to decide".

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

He said Mr 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.

He suggested to them that the mobile phone analysis had already been proved as unreliable because a call Derek Quearney made in Broadstone was picked up by a mast in Harcourt St, when one expert said its field of coverage covered Synge St to Eustace Tce.

He also asked them to consider why gardaí were so anxious Mr O'Reilly's alibi, Derek Quearney, would admit his times were wrong if the phone evidence putting his phone near the house at the time of the murder was so reliable.

He insisted the important thing about Mr Quearney's evidence is that he said he "believed" he saw Mr O'Reilly in the depot before 10am.

Returning to the subject of Mr 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 did not 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 little bit of science," he said.

"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?"