€440m cocaine trial: Defendants' lawyers attack 'fixated' prosecution

The prosecution in the €440m cocaine trial was attacked as speculative, remote, fixated and incorrect as lawyers for two of the defendants made their closing submissions to the jury today.

It now remains for Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin to address the jury on the law and to review the evidence in the eight-week trial and it emerged that the jury will be sent out to consider their verdicts in the case on 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.

Closing submissions on behalf of Wanden and Wharrie were made yesterday.

Tim O’Leary senior counsel said: “The prosecution case against Perry Wharrie is very difficult, very subtle and very remote because of the lack of evidence against him… In my view, in all humility, if you do your job properly you will have to acquit my client.”

Mr O’Leary said that the case was opened in a particular way claiming that various things would be proven against Wharrie but he asked what actual evidence the State – with all its investigative resources – had put forward: “What does it amount to? It does not amount to anything.”

The senior counsel asked what possible explanation was there, “in the blizzard of information”, for Wharrie going to Dunlough Bay with Joseph Daly to rescue Daly’s brother, except that he (Wharrie) did not realize what was going on at Dunlough Bay.

Mr O’Leary said the State said they would show from phone records that Wharrie was controlling the movements of the drugs yacht, the Lucky Day, but he said it did not turn out like that in the evidence and that they were incorrect. He said they jumped to the assumption that it was Perry Wharrie but they got the wrong person. “But they still drive on saying it was a joint enterprise.”

Padraig Dwyer SC said the prosecution also got it wrong after they saw Wanden in the water at Dunlough Bay where the cocaine was found. “Simply because of the way the gardaí found Martin Wanden they believed he was guilty. They had one vision only, that he was guilty...They became fixated to the point where they could not and still cannot let go,” he said.

Mr Dwyer said that the State claimed that a particular phone that was found in a dry box at Dunlough Bay belonged to Wanden because it was registered to an alias he used, namely, Steven Witsie, on January 16 2007.

The senior counsel said Wanden was with family and friends dealing with matters arising out of his sister’s death in England at that time the phone was purchased in Bantry, Co Cork. In relation to the prosecution claim that the particular phone belonged to Wanden, Mr Dwyer said: “Six witnesses came from England to nail the lie that he bought that phone.”

He said the jury should be careful of fingerprint evidence, particularly evidence of a Wanden fingerprint on a tourist map with a blue pen marking a significant point at sea. “The prosecution cannot say when the fingerprint was put on it, when the blue line was put on it or who put the blue line on it. It can look entirely innocuous if you look at it with another set of eyes…There is an innocent explanation for that 100%,” Mr Dwyer said.

Judge Ó Donnabháin will begin his address to the jury tomorrow.