An Irish backpacker accused of stabbing a man to death in an Australian brothel must face a second trial, after a jury yesterday failed to reach a verdict.
Mr Gerard Gallagher (25), of Enniscrone, Co Sligo, was placed in custody by Judge Robert Hume pending a bail application. No date was given for the application or for a new trial.
Yesterday the jury of 10 men and two women said in two notes to Judge Hume that they were hopelessly split.
Mr Gallagher, who worked as a builder, denies stabbing 30-year-old Filipino Mr Mateo Mamaril 41 times at a brothel in Sydney's Bondi Beach suburb on May 30th last year. The jurors, who were required to be unanimous if a verdict was to be reached, wrote: "All reasonable avenues of discussion have been exhausted."
After reading their first note, Judge Hume ordered the jurors not to give up. But after the second note was sent three hours later, he discharged them. The jury was in its third day of deliberations on day 17 of the trial at Darlinghurst Supreme Court, Sydney.
The judge told the jurors: "The potential for disagreement always exists. It is obvious from the time you have spent that you have put a lot of thought and effort into trying to reach a verdict. The result is unfortunate." Mr Gallagher admitted in the witness-box that he regularly paid his alleged victim's sister, Mely, for sex.
Prosecutors claimed he broke into the brothel looking for the prostitute, with whom he had had a row a few days previously.
Instead, he found Mr Mamaril, whom he murdered after a struggle, prosecutors alleged.
A running shoe belonging to Mr Gallagher was found at the murder scene. Detective Neil Marsden claimed the accused also left a bloody fingerprint.
But Mr Gallagher claimed his runners were stolen from outside his home before the murder, then worn to the brothel by the killer.
Mr Gallagher's lawyers insisted police contaminated the fingerprint using outdated tests. It could not be proved the print was made in blood, they said.