Hutch trial: Tale of the Tape as conversations to be heard

Criminal Courts of Justice in Dublin will be the venue for the Tale of the Tape as the Regency murder trial enters a 'core' part of the proceedings. File picture: Niall Carson

Courtroom 11 in the Criminal Courts of Justice in Dublin will be the venue for the Tale of the Tape as the Regency murder trial enters a “core” part of the proceedings.

The three-judge Special Criminal Court ruled last week that they would listen to 10 hours of conversations between Gerard ‘the Monk’ Hutch and former Sinn Féin councillor Jonathan Dowdall.

In a trial that already has seen the veil lifted and a look given at the operations of covert-surveillance gardaí, the trial now turns to bugging evidence as a few crucial weeks get under way.

The reason the court has access to such conversations at all is because gardaí placed a bug on Dowdall’s Toyota Land Cruiser just a few weeks after David Byrne was shot dead at the Regency Hotel on February 5, 2016.

The trial also finds itself in the situation whereby whatever is on those tapes could be ruled inadmissible and excluded from the evidence. If that were to be the outcome, it will only occur after the judges hear these tapes.

The date of the recording is March 7, 2016 — a month after the Regency killing, and two days before gardaí arrested a man in possession of AK-47-style guns used in the attack. The prosecution’s case is that Mr Hutch and Dowdall were travelling North for a meeting with republicans.

'Part of the core' of case

Sean Gillane, prosecuting, told the court last week that what is on these recordings are “part of the core” of the State’s case against Mr Hutch, who stands accused of Mr Byrne’s murder. It is a charge he denies.

The only real hint of what is on these recordings came during the opening statement given by Mr Gillane on the very first day of the trial.

He said that “many topics were traversed” on the tapes, including events at the Regency, the feud with the Kinahan gang, and “efforts to make peace or agree a ceasefire”. 

If there are 10 hours of such evidence to be heard, and it is in fact “part of the core” of the prosecution’s case, it is likely there is much of relevance contained on those tapes.

They will form the next chapter of Mr Hutch's murder trial in the wake of a tough week for the prosecution.

Last Wednesday, the court heard that the former head of the covert Garda National Surveillance Unit did not consult the senior investigating officer on the Regency Hotel murder investigation or the DPP when he destroyed records from a tracker device deployed on Dowdall’s vehicle.

'A real problem'

Mr Hutch’s defence lawyer, Brendan Grehan, said he couldn’t understand how former Detective Inspector Ciaran Hoey could have, “in good faith”, made the decision to have potentially relevant evidence to a criminal trial destroyed, calling it a "real problem".

The court has certainly not heard the last of this matter, and Mr Grehan is also unimpressed with the State’s plans to have the tapes admitted to evidence.

Mr Grehan said their “core argument” would be that gardaí were aware that Dowdall's Toyota Land Cruiser was outside the jurisdiction, in Northern Ireland, for eight of the 10 hours of those recordings.

He said the evidence harvested from that "illicit fruit" should be excluded from the trial.

With the evidence of State witness Dowdall also still to come, the drama in Courtroom 11 is only just beginning.