LAST UPDATE | 26 Oct 2018

JUDGES AT THE Special Criminal Court will continue delivering their judgment next week in the trial of three Dubliner’s accused of murdering Gareth Hutch. 

Hutch (36), nephew of Gerry “the monk” Hutch, was shot dead as he was getting into his car outside Avondale House flats on North Cumberland Street in Dublin on the morning of 24 May 2016. He died as a result of four gun shot injuries.

Presiding judge Justice Tony Hunt, sitting with Judge Patricia Ryan and Judge Michael Walsh at the non-jury court, has so far spent five hours reviewing the evidence against Jonathan Keogh.

Justice Hunt said at 4.20pm today that there was still “almost 40 pages” remaining in Mr Keogh’s judgment but the verdicts against the other two co-accused would be considerably shorter. 

With his voice audibly strained, the judge announced he was adjourning the verdicts until next Friday at 10.30am. 

There was a heavy presence from the garda Public Order Unit in a packed courtroom for the reading of the judgment today.

The prosecution contend that Keogh threatened to kill Hutch the evening before the shooting, that Thomas Fox (31) and Regina Keogh (41) were instrumental in planning the murder, and Keogh and another man, AB, were the shooters.

Thomas Fox, with an address at Rutland Court, Dublin 1, Regina Keogh from Avondale House, Cumberland Street North, Dublin 1 and Johnathan Keogh of Gloucester Place, Dublin 1, have pleaded not guilty to murdering Hutch.

Fox has also denied unlawfully possessing a Makarov 9 mm handgun on 23 May 2016 at the same place.

The judge indicated to the court before lunchtime that he might not have time to deliver the verdicts against all of the accused today. 

Hunt previously informed the court that the judgment would take between four and five hours to read out. 

Prosecution counsel Paul Burns said in his closing speech at the end of July that the three co-accused had put “considerable thought and preparation” into Hutch’s “truly shocking” killing which was not a “spur of the moment” attack.