NI: The Casement Park trials
01 July 1992
In March 1988, in the wake of the killings of three unarmed IRA members in Gibraltar and the attack on a subsequent funeral by a Loyalist gunman wielding hand grenades as well as a rifle, two off-duty British soldiers drove into the path of another funeral cortege as it passed Casement Park. The mourners stopped their car and disarmed them. Some time later a smaller group of men removed them from the park and took them to a piece of waste ground where they were shot.
The two men who actually killed the soldiers have never been apprehended. Instead, the investigation and the prosecutions have been directed towards anyone in the crowd of mourners who was in the vicinity of Casement Park as their car was stopped and they were taken into the Park. Scores of mourners have been arrested and 34 have been tried for offences which range from murder to perverting the course of justice. More are due to stand trial in the autumn.
The sentences received have been punitive - fifteen years for false imprisonment and life for allegedly aiding and abetting murder (by being present in the Park, whilst the soldiers were being questioned and before they were removed and killed by others). As a consequence, many observers view the trials and the sentences received as a means of punishing a whole community for their political views and allegiances.
The men have all been tried in the Diplock Courts and this has served to highlight the serious inadequacies of every aspect of this system. The trials have been presided over by a judge sitting alone without a jury. As most of the trials have involved disputed identification evidence, this means that one man has been the sole arbiter of complex issues of fact and law. The defendants' ability to raise a doubt about the evidence has further been hampered by the fact that as there are only 10 judges available to sit in these courts, every judge has been exposed to the same live and video evidence on a great number of occasions, hearing bail applications, the substantive trials and any subsequent appeals. In these circumstances, case hardening has to be a factor.
Identification evidence
The identification evidence itself centred around compilation tapes produced by the prosecution from television tapes impounded from journalists present on the day and from the heli-tele video tape shot by an army helicopter hovering over the funeral cortege. The material used was highly selective and unused material was not released to the defence lawyers.
Neither were they provided with the high quality equipment used by the Prosecution to enlarge and enhance various sections of individual frames of the tape. This meant that the defendants were at a clear disadvantage. They did not have access to sections of tape which may have supported their case or equipment to deconstruct the enhancements. Even the finished compilations were of extremely poor quality. Colour resolution was highly unstable and facial features were indistinct. Prosecution witnesses were identifying men by the way they walked or by a piece of clothing in a crowd of hundreds, all very similarly dressed.
The defendants were further handicapped by the removal of their right to silence by the Criminal Evidence (Northern Ireland) Order 1988. This meant that silence in court or during interrogation was capable of being used to corroborate very poor identification evidence in order to obtain a conviction.
In terms of substantive law the trials have also served to extend the meaning of common purpose far beyond previous limits. Mere presence coupled with an allegation that the defendants must have at some time during the activities realised that one possible outcome of the actions taking place was murder of the soldiers was enough to convict several young men of aiding and abetting murder. No evidence was called to show that the killings were the result of any planned action. They did not belong to any group or gang with a previous h