A Belfast man was cleared by the Special Criminal Court yesterday of the capital murder of a garda in Dublin 18 years ago. It is the first time a person on trial for the capital murder of a garda has been acquitted since the start of the Troubles in 1968.
Sean Hughes (42), of Albert Terrace, Belfast, was found not guilty of the capital murder of Garda Patrick Reynolds (23), at Avonbeg Gardens, Tallaght, Co Dublin, on February 20th, 1982.
Hughes was also acquitted of the unlawful possession of firearms and ammunition with intent to endanger life in Tallaght on the same date.
The prosecution had accepted there was insufficient evidence to support Hughes's conviction on charges of the theft of £62,100 from a bank in Askeaton, Co Limerick, on February 18th, 1982, and receiving stolen cash, and the court also acquitted him of those charges. Mr Justice Morris, presiding, said the court was not satisfied it could convict Hughes on the basis, without corroboration, of his identification in court by two retired gardai who were at the scene of the shooting.
The judge said the court accepted the two former gardai who had given evidence, Mr Patrick O'Brien and Mr Thomas Quinn, as "manifestly truthful witnesses" who had no doubt that their identification of the accused was valid.
But bearing in mind the warnings in law associated with identification evidence and the dangers involved in acting upon it, the court had to look at what corroboration was offered.
He said the court accepted a fingerprint found at the flat in Tallaght was that of the accused and also Garda evidence that it was "very recent" and "extremely fresh", but it did not involve the accused in the alleged crime.
The fingerprint went no further than establishing the accused was in the flat a day or two before the incident, he said. The court was also satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that spectacles found in the flat were the property of Hughes, but this did not establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused was there at the time of the shooting.
There was a possibility that they could have been brought into the flat in the absence of the accused, he said. The court therefore did not accept the fingerprint or the spectacles as corroboration and was left with the uncorroborated evidence of dock identification.
The judge said that having regard to the warnings in law relating to dock identification and the fact that the dock identifications were made 18 years after the incident, the court was not satisfied it could convict the accused. The court therefore found Hughes not guilty on all counts.
The court heard during the 18-day trial that Garda Patrick Reynolds was killed in the hallway of the local authority flats in Tallaght after he was shot by a gunman standing on the first-floor landing.
The court was told that a party of five unarmed gardai surprised a number of people with the proceeds of a bank robbery in Askeaton and a number of guns in the flat at Avonbeg Gardens.
Mr Thomas Quinn told the court that during a struggle in the bathroom of the flat the man he identified as Hughes aimed a pistol at Garda Leo Kenny, but the gun misfired.
Garda Quinn hit the man over the head with his baton. Mr Patrick O'Brien told the court he saw Garda Reynolds being shot in the back as he tried to flee from a gunman.
Hughes was identified in court by Mr O'Brien as the gunman who fired the shots that killed Garda Reynolds.
The court was told that Garda Reynolds died from a single shot in the back. During the trial the court ruled that an informal identification procedure carried out by the gardai in Paris in November 1982 was not admissible.
The court also ruled that alleged verbal admissions made by Mr Hughes about his part in the murder while he was in custody at Swinford Garda station, Co Mayo, in May 1997 were inadmissible.
Hughes is currently serving an eight-year sentence for a bank robbery in Co Mayo in 1997.