The evidence concerning Dermot Laide: Dermot Laide was more than a year out of Blackrock College on August 30th, 2000. That day, he went swimming in Killiney with Andrew Frame and some other old schoolfriends.
The 18-year-old from Castleblayney, Co Monaghan, had maintained the friendship forged as boarders and players on the rugby senior cup team, on which he had played hooker.
Unprepared for a night on the town, he had to buy a toothbrush and razor blades. He also had to borrow a set of clothes, including a blue Diesel jumper, Firetrap jeans and a pair of deck shoes, from Alan Dalton, the friend with whom he was staying the night.
They then dropped into the Magic Carpet off-licence to stock up on cans of Bulmers and Smirnoff Ice, before heading off to meet a dozen more friends at the home of Shane Fallon. For Dermot Laide, that was where the drinking ended, because when he got to Club Anabel, one of the three friends accompanying him was refused entry, possibly for age reasons, and Laide, too, was rejected as "guilty by association". However, as he was staying with Alan Dalton, and Dalton was already inside, Laide was forced to hang around for several hours waiting for him to come out.
The trouble began as the crowd of more than 700 began to emerge from the night-club. Dermot Laide always contended he had only jumped into the fight when he saw Andrew Frame "being badly beaten up".
In his statement given at Donnybrook Garda station on September 1st, 2000, where he handed over all the clothes and footwear he was wearing on the night, he said that as people emerged from the club, a group of about six or seven began to slag Andrew Frame, and he was being shoved in an aggressive manner.
Another friend walked into the middle of this group, he said, and had a verbal altercation with "a guy in a red shirt", whom the jury had heard at the outset was Brian Murphy.
Laide said this youth then pushed his friend in the face with an open hand, and there was some more pushing and shoving. Someone backed into Laide and he said to him: "What are you starting fights for? I hate fighting."
He remembered two of them punching Andrew Frame and another youth, and he went to Mr Frame's assistance, he said, because it looked like he was getting badly beaten. He kicked someone in the shin and threw a punch but he didn't think it connected. He then punched someone in the head.
Laide said the youth in the red top then threw a punch at him and he kicked him once in the calf area. This person then backed off, and Laide said he then continued fighting with the other youth. At this point, about 10 or 12 people joined in the fighting and he remembered the "guy in the red top" stumbling towards him.
Laide said, after further evidence, that the next thing he saw was the youth in the red top lying on the ground.
Two people then carried the youth across the road. He said he went over twice to see if he was OK and Andrew Frame was also there. Laide and Frame then went back to the Burlington Hotel side of the road and someone came over and punched Frame twice in the head. Laide then punched this person in the teeth and cut his hand before the two were separated.
Some three weeks later, Dermot Laide would tell Det Garda Thomas Rock that he had given the deceased "two good belts". He declined to say anything else.
One witness said he saw Laide hit Brian Murphy "with four or five punches, hard punches. Dermot Laide is a big dude and he was giving it his all".
Andrew Frame said that as he walked towards Donnybrook afterwards to get a taxi with some friends, including Laide, the latter seemed to be quite shaken. He said Laide admitted to him that he had punched "the guy who had got hurt" and showed him a cut on his hand.
Paul Cahill, a student who witnessed the fight, said he saw a youth in a wine-coloured T-shirt swinging punches at a taller youth. He said the youth in the T-shirt appeared to be getting the upper hand but then another youth - wearing the same "Diesel" jumper as himself, except in a different colour and who, the prosecution contended, was Dermot Laide - ran in and punched the man in the red T-shirt on the left side of his face.
At that point, he said, "the whole place erupted and fighting broke out all over the place". Eventually the youth in the T-shirt fell over and was kicked in the head quite hard. Mr Cahill said he couldn't describe any of the people who were kicking him but the youth who had punched him on the left side of the face was in the group who were kicking him.
Under cross-examination, Mr Cahill admitted that he might have been mistaken that the man in the Diesel jumper was one of the youths who was part of the group kicking the person on the ground.
David Cox, who told the court that he knew Laide quite well through school though he wasn't a close friend of his, had travelled to Club Anabel that night with Laide and two others. He said that when he emerged from the club, he was standing a few yards from a group of about 15 to 20 people who seemed to be embroiled in an argument. He saw the group surrounding a couple of men, one of whom was the youth in the red shirt, and he seemed to be trying to initiate a fight with Andrew Frame. They started pushing each other and Cox assumed it was just "an argument that would regularly be seen out in town but never go any further".
He said he then looked back and saw Laide connecting with two "strong and forceful" punches to the face of the person he thought was wearing the red shirt. This person stumbled backwards but he didn't see if he fell.
Mr Cox said that after he had seen Laide land the punches, the two made eye-contact and the accused came over to speak to him. He said Laide seemed extremely shocked with what he had done and had a cut on the back of his hand. Laide said to him: "I can't believe what I just did. Look at my hand." Laide then walked from the scene.
The court also heard from Alan Dalton, the friend with whom Laide was staying that night. Mr Dalton said he saw Laide on the edge of the fight with his arms raised, about to throw a punch, and he also saw him kicking out at somebody's shins a number of times.
Laide admitted to him that he punched the man in the red shirt and then showed Mr Dalton a cut on the back of his hand. He did say he could have got this cut when he punched another person after the larger fight. They were both extremely shocked the next morning, he said, when Mr Dalton's father told them that Brian Murphy was dead.
They both went to Blackrock College after Laide's father suggested that the two boys write everything down that they could remember, without any outside interference. Once there, Laide told his former principal and rugby coach, Mr Alan McGinty, that he recalled lashing out at the boy in the red shirt with his foot and catching him across the legs. According to Mr McGinty, Laide also told him he got hit in the face and he reacted by throwing a punch, but didn't know who he connected with. The incident all happened in about 10 or 15 seconds.
Although Mr McGinty signed one of the accounts and his vice-principal, Fr Tom Nash, signed the other, he had not witnessed them writing out the accounts and was not sure what he had signed. He did not know what had happened to the documents afterwards and denied he had asked for them to be written to protect the good image of the school.
The principal told the court that his client had boarded at Blackrock College for all of his second-level education. He had a good record and had always been a very pleasant young man who played rugby on the school's senior cup team.
