Judge describes collapse of trials as ‘a complete farce’

A Circuit Court judge has described the collapse of a trial in Ennis this week as “a farce” and “a monumental waste of people’s time, good will and energy”.
The comments were made after the second trial in two consecutive days collapsed at Ennis Circuirt Criminal Court shortly after a jury was empanelled.
Judge Donagh McDonagh, who has been presiding over criminal trials in Ennis for the past two weeks, stated, “Let it be noted that I am distinctly unhappy with this as a process. At some stage, someone in authority is going to have to take responsibility for cases that don’t go on,” following the collapse of a second trial this week.
Ennis Circuit Criminal Court was due to hear the case of John McCormack of 26, Purcell Park, Shannon and Declan O’Neill of 57, Broadleaf Apartments, Broad Street, Limerick on Tuesday, where both denied a charge of handling stolen Canterbury rugby sportswear. 
A jury was sworn and the prosecution opened the case outlining what it intended to prove but after it called its first witness, a legal issue arose. After legal argument, the jury was told a large portion of the State’s principal witnesses proposed testimony was hearsay. Judge McDonagh directed the jury to return a verdict of not guilty by direction of the judge.
On Wednesday, a new trial opened before a new jury whereby Kalem Wilkie of 126, Kilnasoolagh Park, Newmarket-on-Fergus and Tom McNamara of 125, Kilnasoolagh Park, Newmarket-on-Fergus were each found not guilty, again by direction of the trial judge on charges of affray and producing an article.
In this case, three civilian witnesses were sworn into evidence but told the court they did not wish to give evidence in the trial, while a further three civilian witnesses due to give evidence were not present in court. As a result, prosecuting counsel, Stephen Coughlan (BL), indicated the State was not in a position to prove its case.
Judge McDonagh asked Mr Coughlan why the matter had not been brought to the court’s attention prior to the jury being sworn in and was informed that the matter only came to the State’s attention after the jury had been empanelled.
“This has been a monumental waste of people’s time, good will and energy and I have no doubt that people on the jury panel will have suffered financial loss because of this,” Judge McDonagh said.
Defence counsels for Mr Wilkie and Mr McNamara requested that the judge direct the jury to return a verdict of not guilty in light of the situation. Judge McDonagh then addressed the jury and apologised to them for what he again described as “a complete waste of time, energy and resources”.
He said, “There has been no application to treat witnesses as hostile, which is open to the prosecution but no application of that kind has been made. I do nothing more than note that.
“I am distinctly unhappy having to put a verdict by direction of the trial judge, I am very unhappy about that, it puts me in the cross hairs of why this went wrong. But it appears that is the only thing that is open to me. I do so however, reluctantly. Yesterday’s case was a case in point. No one appeared to have read the first person’s statement, if they had, the case would not have gone on,” he continued.
The judge, having received the issue paper back from the jury in the latter trial, again apologised to the jury, referring to the situation this time as “a complete farce is how I describe it”.