IT’S ALWAYS rewarding to step outside of your world and into another. I went to a murder trial today in the High Court in Dublin. The defendants, let’s call them Louise and Michael, both 19, were accused of kicking to death a young man called Darren on Christmas Day 2007.
The case was in court 19, in the brand new courthouse nicknamed the Colosseum. Inside, it is a cylinder, with six curving floors of courts. The different groups were clearly visible -
- accused and victims’ families tattooed, in tracksuits and loud, one had a sticker hanging off the seat of his adidas shineys;
- plain-clothes police flat nosed and burly;
- lawyers scurrying about harrassed with the cares of ambition weighing on them;
- reporters, discreet and businesslike.
Each group was both sly and stupid – the police had already played their tricks in the police station but were found out under cross examination; the witnesses lied through their teeth, displayed selective memory and couldn’t read nor write; the lawyers were clinical in demolishing witnesses the way a grandmaster destroys a novice but then forgot the accused’s name; the judge confessed he didn’t know a crucial point of law so had to have it explained to him. And in the gallery, the families watched, by turns emotional, shaking their heads, and then baffled.
One witness for the prosecution claimed he was sober at the time of the attack. The defence was having none of it:
Defence counsel: So you were sober?
Witness: I was.
DC: But you’d been drinking?
W: I had.
DC: What had you been drinking?
W: Budweiser.
DC: How much?
W: A few cans.
DC: How many?
W: 9.
DC: And would those be the 500ml ones?
W: They would.
DC Alright. So, you’d had about 8 pints of beer then?
W: Yes.
DC: And anything else?
W: Drugs.
DC: What drugs?
W: Es.
DC: How many?
W: 3 or 4.
DC. I see. So 8 pints and 3 or 4 ecstacy tablets. And you want us to believe you were sober?
The police were the slyest. They had their tricks. Michael was arrested when he was 17, so his father had to be present at the interview. The cops placed the father’s chair behind Michael so he was at a remove from the table and so didn’t take part. When Louise said she wanted a lawyer they rang one, got his voicemail but continued the interview anyway. They let her go, and then re-arrested her with insufficient evidence, hoodwinking a judge. Each one of them was inept in the box – like naughty schoolchildren caught sneaking exam results. They had their technique – never look at the defence lawyer – that would only put them off. Address only the judge “M’lord” at all times, and obfuscate, evade and parry – their answers were out of the politician’s textbook.
The saddest bit was when Michael’s gangly father was called to testify. He wasn’t even bothered putting on a suit. He wore an old diamond jumper and jeans, his smooth pate glinted off the strip lights and he twitched and scratched his head, more with every lie. When he admitted he couldn’t read nor write, Michael’s head dropped in the dock, the first time it had, at the shame, the embarrassment at the father he had.
These are people at the bottom of the pile. Louise has an IQ of 58. Michael can’t read or write. He is, as they put it, at a “low educational standard”. But Louise was accused of jumping repeatedly on the man’s cheat, kicking him in the head, smashing a vodka bottle and an ash tray on him. Michael had been arrested before for assault, and had spent 10 months inside.
Did they do it? Of course. But if the defence keeps picking away at the police’s shoddy handling of the investigation, they could walk. Are the cops really that dumb? Or do they pull this shit all the time and mostly get away with it?
The trial continues.
curving
