A jury of 10 woman and two men has acquitted a Donegal man of rape. The woman said she had earlier snorted cocaine while she was socialising in a Dublin city centre late-night nightclub.
The jury at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin, which also heard expert testimony that there was no forensic evidence of rape, reached its not-guilty verdicts after seven hours.
The 37-year-old accused man had denied raping and sexually assaulting the Cork woman on January 30th, 2005.
Mr Justice Liam McKechnie thanked the jury, which spent one night in a hotel, for its careful consideration of the case and told the man that he was free to leave the court.
The hearing, which had continued over five days, was a retrial, a previous jury having disagreed last May following five hours of deliberations and having also spent one night in a hotel before announcing it was too deadlocked to reach any verdict on the case.
The woman told Denis Vaughan Buckley SC, prosecuting, that she met the man, who was with friends with whom she was socialising in the city centre before flying to the United States two days later.
She told how she had consumed several "alcopops" and had snorted a line of cocaine while the party was in a nightclub.
They had more drinks later in a friend's bedsit before she went to bed there.
She said she awoke to find the man having sex with her.
Forensic scientist Jennifer Ryan told Richard Lyons SC, defending, that she found no evidence of semen when she examined pubic hair and items of the woman's clothing.
The man told gardaí he stopped having sex with the woman "when she told me to stop" after she had asked him if he had "any protection".
Garda Louise Heffernan said the man had contacted gardaí voluntarily when he was informed by friends about the woman's allegations and had co-operated "in every way".
Garda Heffernan said the man claimed the woman had been flirting with him while they had been socialising and that he had been sitting on his knee in the bedsit before she retired to bed.
He said he woke up with his leg up on her bed and the complainant's hand on it.
He said he put his hand on hers before he got up on to the bed where they began hugging and then kissing, and that afterwards "one thing led to another".
He told gardaí he had penetrated the woman once but that he stopped after she said she had no protection and he told her he did not have a condom either.
Garda Heffernan said the man agreed he had not "asked her for permission to have sex with her" but said he stopped when she said she had no protection.
He said they continued kissing after that but that "things went cold" and they both got dressed.
He told gardaí that another girl whom he knew then advised him to leave the bedsit and said that she would "sort this out".
He said he did not know what was going on and he saw the complainant speaking to two other men who were also in the apartment.
Garda Heffernan said the man maintained that the complainant had not shouted at him at any time and he was aware she had a boyfriend.
He agreed that the woman's statement, which was read to him, differed from his account, but repeated that his replies in the interview were correct.