A Co Louth man who is seeking to stop his retrial on a conspiracy charge connected with the Real IRA bombing of Omagh has "suffered severely" since he was first arrested and charged more than eight years ago, the High Court was told yesterday.
Colm Murphy said in an affidavit that he had been a "man of means" before his arrest but now his livelihood had been destroyed and his marriage had broken down.
Mr Murphy (53), a building contractor and publican who is a native of Co Armagh but with an address at Jordan's Corner, Ravensdale, Co Louth, was freed on bail in 2005 after the Court of Criminal Appeal quashed his conviction and 14-year sentence for a conspiracy offence connected with the Real IRA bombing of Omagh in 1998 in which 29 people died.
The appeal court overturned the conviction and ordered a retrial after finding that the Special Criminal Court had failed to give proper regard to altered Garda interview notes. It found there had been "an invasion of the presumption of innocence" in the court's judgment on Mr Murphy.
During his 25-day trial in 2001 and 2002, Mr Murphy had pleaded not guilty to conspiring in Dundalk with another person not before the court to cause an explosion in the State or elsewhere between August 13th and 16th, 1998.
Mr Murphy has taken judicial review proceedings in the High Court aimed at stopping his retrial on grounds including that he is prejudiced by the "systemic delays" in prosecuting him. That delay, he contends, included an inexcusable three-year delay by the Director of Public Prosecutions in preferring perjury charges against two gardaí who gave evidence at his first trial which opened in 2001.
The State denies that Mr Murphy is prejudiced by any delays and says he is debarred from raising delay because he agreed to many of the adjournments of the case.
On the second day of the hearing yesterday, Mr Justice Iarfhlaith O'Neill said he would allow Mr Murphy's legal team to amend the grounds of the judicial review proceedings to take account of a report of a neuro-psychologist earlier this year which concluded that Mr Murphy suffered brain damage in a hit-and-run road traffic accident in 1988 and suffers from short-term memory loss as a result.
Mr Murphy has claimed he is disadvantaged in that he cannot challenge his interviews by gardaí over three days because of the manner of his impairment.
In his affidavit read to the court yesterday, Mr Murphy said he had suffered severely since his arrest.
He said his business had been destroyed. He was unemployed since 2005 and had also lost his family home and assets.
The case continues today.