Court sketch: Three and a half years of a via dolorosa, a journey of raw anguish, unfathomable loss, barely-controlled anger and profoundly conflicting emotions found an outlet yesterday in Court 24, writes Kathy Sheridan.
At about 11.30 a.m., Mary Murphy took the witness stand to remind the justice system of what the past six weeks have been about. First leaning across to Judge Michael White to present him with her favourite picture of her dead son along with a memorial card, she then, for 30 minutes, in a quiet, determined voice, tried to humanise her boy, following a trial which, she said, had almost "brainwashed" her into thinking that what had happened to him was his "own fault". She felt "brutalised" by the trial process.
"Where is my baby in all of this? I can't find him. He's lost, I'm lost ... Where is my pride and joy, my full of confidence child, my crazy, exuberant, full of cheer, larger than life child, my naive, far from perfect child, who did some silly things and some fabulous things?"
Families and friends of everyone involved sat numbed in an uncomfortably crowded and airless courtroom. Some wept silently, or shifted uneasily, as Mary Murphy explained how she had considered, then dismissed, her intention to describe for the court what it was like to see Brian lie dead on a hospital bed "with his two teeth smashed", what it was like to see him with her rosary beads, with the candles burning night and day, the private letter from his sister across his body, and the sense of devastation in the crematorium, as his favourite song November Rain was played.
She gave vignettes of their lives together - of lunch in town with him on his 18th birthday, of a visit to his grandmother who was suffering from Alzheimer's, of showing Robert, his then six-year-old brother, how to skim stones over water. And then by an odd synchronicity, as each defending barrister rose to seek mitigation for their clients, the afternoon was devoted to vignettes of the young men accused of involvement in his death, of good deeds done, of trips to Lourdes, of lives on hold, shadowed by stress-related illness and the knowledge that they would never be able to walk down a street without being recognised as one of the "malefactors" in this case.
Fr Aidan Troy, the Belfast priest, who baptised all the Laide children, described a close, hard-working, good-living family and their son Dermot, who took pub work and chose to graft on building sites as a labourer, a boy who was "on the shy side of normal" and whose parents were "quite pleased" to see him going out that August night.
"To say this was a very wealthy, posh family rearing a family of brats is so far from the truth that it breaks my heart . . . I know a lot of people who are richer than the Laides."
He described the multiple young deaths he has seen in his Belfast parish and, in a theme that resonated around the courtroom and echoed a wider debate on whether the accused men's predicament could be described as a tragedy in the same breath as the Murphys, said it was his experience that "anybody associated with a young death is enormously traumatised by it too".
Like the Murphys, he too perceived a lack in the justice system. "It is absolutely, patently clear that the Laides are heartbroken at the death of this young man. What they want is a bringing to the surface of the total truth of that night, and that Dermot Laide's involvement would then be viewed in a more realistic context than it has been in this trial."
Towards the end, when Anthony Sammon (for Seán Mackey) stated that "the spark of violence that caused the conflagration was lit by Brian Murphy", it seemed a step too far for the Murphys. Mary Murphy mouthed a silent protest and left the courtroom with her daughter. They returned after about 20 minutes. They had each said earlier, in different ways, that they will survive. "I will survive as Brian has survived," said Mary Murphy. "I am not afraid of death anymore.
"I look forward to running into Brian's outstretched arms as he enfolds me in his warm, joyful embrace."