The Casement Park trials
01 January 1991
The Casement Park trials
artdoc August=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