LAST UPDATE | 31 Dec 2024

A JURY HAS suspended its deliberations for the New Year’s holiday and will return on Friday to consider their verdict in the trial of law professor Diarmuid Phelan, who denies murdering a trespasser on his farm in Tallaght.

The jury panel of nine men and three women have so far spent four hours and two minutes considering their verdict.

When the jurors returned to the courtroom at 3.50pm this afternoon, presiding judge Justice Siobhan Lankford said she understood they would like to head home for the evening.

The judge invited the 12 jurors to return to the Central Criminal Court at 1pm on Friday to resume their deliberations. The trial is not sitting on New Year’s Day or on Thursday due to juror commitments.

Justice Lankford reminded the jurors not to discuss the case with anyone else between now and their return to the Criminal Courts of Justice Building on Friday.

She added: “There was a time when you could not have gone home to your families until you had reached a verdict and would have been put up in a hotel. It’s essential you keep yourselves to yourselves until you are back on Friday and start deliberating again”.

Before sending the jury out to begin their deliberations at 10.33am on Tuesday morning, Justice Lankford asked them to be unanimous in their verdict. She also thanked them for their attendance in court this morning, saying: “You have been exemplary throughout the trial.”

The judge had gone through a “path to verdict” document with the panel yesterday evening with the three verdicts open to them. The document contained questions that the jurors may ask themselves in arriving at their verdict.

Referring to the document this morning, Ms Justice Lankford reminded the jury that it is “a suggested way of arriving” at their verdict and that they should do “whatever you think is best with the guidance you have been given”.

The judge reminded the panel that there were three verdicts they could return in relation to the murder charge against Phelan, namely; guilty of murder, not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter, or not guilty.

The jurors were given 12 copies of the “path to verdict” document. “This document will take you through a proposed method of arriving at those verdicts but that’s a matter for yourselves,” she continued.

The jury were told there were a number of paths to the three verdicts available.

Should the jury find Phelan did intend to kill or seriously injure the trespasser, they must consider the issue of self defence raised by the defendant.

If the jury considers a reasonable person would have used the degree of force employed by Phelan in the circumstances in which the accused genuinely believed them to be, Phelan was entitled to an acquittal on the basis of self defence.

If they find the force used was not reasonable but that Phelan had an honest belief that force was necessary, they should return a verdict of not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter.

However, if they were satisfied Phelan was not acting in self defence, that he intended to cause death or serious injury, then the appropriate verdict is guilty of murder.

If the jury decide the prosecution has not proven Phelan had intent to kill or cause serious injury, they may consider the other paths which also allow for a verdict of manslaughter or an acquittal.

In these circumstances, the jury could return a verdict of manslaughter if they find Phelan did not have an honest belief that the use of force was necessary to defend himself and was instead engaged in an assault on Conlon.

If they find the defendant honestly believed he had to use force to protect himself and that the force used was reasonably necessary in the circumstances that Phelan believed them to be, the verdict is not guilty of either murder or manslaughter.

A verdict of manslaughter could be returned if they find Phelan engaged in an objectively dangerous act when he shot at Conlon.

However, an acquittal could be recorded if the jury find that Phelan did not intend to kill or seriously injure Conlon, that he had an honest belief that force was necessary and that while the force he used was not reasonable, his actions were not objectively dangerous.

Justice Lankford had told the jurors today to let the jury minder know if they had “any questions of any description” and, in terms of breaks, this was the part of the trial that they now ran.

Shortly before lunchtime, the judge told the jury that there were a number of matters she wanted to bring to their attention. She said the jury had heard evidence in relation to different types of ammunition in the accused’s revolver on the day.

Justice Lankford said in their closing speech, the State had suggested not knowing what ammunition in the gun was a matter that the jury could consider in the context of unlawful and dangerous act manslaughter but that this was wrong in law.

“When considering unlawful and dangerous act manslaughter you must be satisfied that Mr Phelan’s conduct on the day in discharging the loaded forearm was objectively dangerous, you are not to have regard that he did not know what ammunition in the gun,” she said.

The judge also gave the jurors the closing speeches made by the prosecution and defence.

The judge had concluded her charge on Monday evening to the 12 jurors, nearly three weeks after the Central Criminal Court trial broke on 12 December due to juror unavailability and the case running over its allotted time. She had previously told the jury in week nine of the trial that they would be accommodated as they were initially told the case would last six weeks.

Phelan (56), has pleaded not guilty to murdering father-of-four Keith ‘Bono’ Conlon (36) at Hazelgrove Farm, Kiltalown Lane, Tallaght, Dublin 24 on 24 February 2022.

The accused man is a barrister, law lecturer and farmer who owns Hazelgrove, formerly a golf course in Tallaght.

The jury had heard that on the day in question three men – the deceased Keith Conlon, along with Kallum Coleman and Robin Duggan – had trespassed on a wooded area of Phelan’s land while hunting foxes or badgers.

Phelan told gardaí in his interviews that he became concerned about a dog running loose on his land towards his sheep. When he got a view of the dog, he shot it with his Winchester rifle, whereupon he said three men immediately “exploded” from the woods and began threatening him.

Phelan said he was shaking with fear and had “scrambled” up a bank to get away but when the two men kept coming he believed they were “coming to fulfil the threats they had made”.

As they got closer, Phelan shouted at two of the unarmed trespassers on his farm to “get back” before he fired three shots from his Smith & Wesson revolver and said he was “stunned when one man went down”.

It is the State’s case that two of the three shots were fired into the air, while the third connected with Keith Conlon.

It is also the prosecution’s case that when the third shot was fired by Phelan, the gun was pointed in the direction of the deceased who was shot in the back of the head when he had turned away to leave. It is in those circumstances, the prosecution say, that the accused intended to kill or cause serious injury to Keith Conlon.

It is the defence’s position that Phelan accidentally hit Keith Conlon while firing three “warning shots”.