Accomplice's uncorroborated evidence key to judgment, writes Carol Coulter, Legal Affairs Correspondent.
The courts have spoken twice on the question of the evidence of people on the State's first witness protection programme, drawn up in the wake of the murder of Veronica Guerin. They will have an opportunity to do so for a third time when the appeal of Brian Meehan of his conviction for the same murder, also on the evidence of an accomplice, is appealed.
The witness protection programme was intended to allow accomplices in the commission of serious crimes to give evidence against others involved in return for unspecified advantages, thought to include prosecution on lesser charges for themselves. It also involved eventual relocation to another jurisdiction for themselves and their families. Three people joined this programme in the course of the investigation of the murder of Veronica Guerin.
Almost exactly a year ago the Special Criminal Court acquitted John Gilligan of the murder. Evidence of his involvement in deciding she should be killed, and in planning the murder, was given by two protected witnesses, Charles Bowden and Russell Warren. Commenting on this evidence, the Special Criminal Court said: "The court is not persuaded that there is any evidence which is corroborative of the evidence of Charles Bowden."
It also said the evidence of Warren was suspect and ought not be relied upon except where it was corroborated by independent evidence. The judges, therefore, decided Gilligan was not guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
This court had had the same misgivings about the evidence of Bowden in the earlier trial of Paul Ward. But despite these doubts, it accepted his evidence on the basis that it could find no reason why Bowden would seek to implicate Ward in the killing if he had not been involved. Paul Ward was found by this court to have been an accessory to the fact of her murder, and therefore guilty of the charge, in November 1998.
Finding no explanation for a witness like Bowden lying is not enough, according to the Court of Criminal Appeal. "It is questionable whether one could be confident of eliminating all factors which would motivate and encourage liars," the three judges said in yesterday's judgment.
They then turned their attention to the main allegations against Ward, according to Bowden. These were that he discussed the murder at a gathering of the gang, and had disposed of the motorbike and gun used in the attack.
The judges stressed "there is no express evidence whatever that a motorbicycle arrived at the house of Paul Ward on the 26th June 1996". There were two sources of this claim - the purported admission of Ward himself, ruled out as inadmissible by the Special Criminal Court, and the word of Bowden. But "the contention that both the bike and the gun were so delivered was not supported by the evidence", said the court.
The message from the Court of Criminal Appeal is therefore clear. The main witness against Paul Ward, his self-confessed accomplice Charles Bowden, was a liar who had been shown to lie time and time again. Therefore not only should his evidence be treated with extreme caution, but some corroborative evidence of his main allegations should be found. None was, therefore his evidence could not be a basis for the conviction.
When Ward was initially convicted, Mr Adrian Hardiman, then a senior counsel and now a Supreme Court judge, said when such evidence was used in Northern Ireland, it was ultimately found to be an unreliable basis for convictions by the Court of Appeal and the system was effectively abandoned.
It remains to be seen what will happen in the appeal by Brian Meehan. But it is hard to see how prosecutions of serious crimes can proceed on uncorroborated evidence from an accomplice.