A FORMER League of Ireland footballer, Mr Derek Dunne, walked free from court yesterday after being cleared of involvement in smuggling heroin.
There was loud cheering and clapping from the public gallery when the verdict was announced.
The jury at Liverpool Crown Court took just two hours to reach their unanimous verdict and Mr Dunne (29) was discharged from the dock. He had been in custody for nine months since his arrest in January.
Judge David Marshall Evans QC told the jury: "I am not surprised at your conclusion."
Mr Dunne refused to comment as he left court, but his solicitor, Mr Geoff Miller, said: "We were always confident that he would be acquitted and we always felt that the case against him was almost non existent."
When Mr Dunne's acquittal was greeted with cheering, the judge warned the public that if there was any more disturbance, "they would spend the night in the cells."
Mr Dunne, a former St Patrick's Athletic footballer who played in the Irish Premier Division for four years, nodded to the jurors as he left the dock.
He was found not guilty of conspiring with his brother, Mr David Dunne, and two Liverpool men, Anthony Wilkinson and John Lavin, and others to export heroin from England to Ireland between July 1st, 1994, and March 21st, 1995.
The prosecution alleged that the arrangement for the drugs to be imported into Ireland were made in telephone calls between Mr Dunne and Wilkinson.
Wilkinson then, using a false name, made short visits to Dublin by hired car. These visits were all preceded days earlier by Mr Dunne going over to England.
But Mr Dunne told the court he had nothing to do with drug dealing or drug smuggling.
He said the telephone calls to his father's home in Alfie Byrne House, Granville Street, Dublin, where he was living until about September 1994, and to Wilkinson's home, were about counterfeit designer clothes.
Wilkinson got them from a man called Frank, and after initially buying some from Wilkinson for himself, Mr Dunne then began buying them in bulk so that he could sell them in Ireland.
He explained he had met Wilkinson at the end of 1993 after forming a relationship with a girl called Louise Hyams, whose aunt, June, lived with Wilkinson in Lamport Street, Liverpool.
In 1994 and up to early 1995, unknown to his companion, Ms Rachel Mitchell, he used to come to Liverpool twice a month to see her.
After Mr Dunne began dealing in counterfeit clothes, Wilkinson came over to Dublin five or six times and he paid him not less than £300 each time and his ferry fare.
Mr Dunne told the court that about August 1994 he bought a derelict house in Portland Place, Dublin, which he later moved into with Ms Mitchell.
In September last year he moved to Liverpool, which was where he was living in January this year when he was arrested at Manchester Airport.
Wilkinson has already been jailed for seven years after admitting the conspiracy charge and Lavin, who was employed as his driver, received four years.
On March 21st last year, Lavin was arrested at Holyhead boarding a ferry to Ireland with £41,000 worth of heroin.
Wilkinson, who was arrested when about to board a flight from Liverpool airport with a "taster" of heroin in his hold all, had a further £8,000 worth of the drug at home.
Mr David Dunne was arrested on the same day near Dublin Airport with £850 cash, but has never been charged.
Mr Derek Dunne's barrister, Mr Charles Garfide QC, had argued in his closing speech that the prosecution had "a perfectly good case against David Dunne but cannot get their hands on him.
"When Derek came to live here, they got their hands on him. The reality is they are prosecuting the wrong man.