A jury has found former Clare All-Ireland winning hurler Niall Gilligan not guilty of assaulting a then 12-year-old boy with a stick.
At Ennis Circuit Court today, the jury delivered a majority not-guilty verdict that Mr Gilligan of Rossroe, Kilmurry, Sixmilebridge, had assaulted, causing harm of the boy, at the Jamaica Inn Hostel, Sixmilebridge, on October 5th, 2023.
Mr Gilligan sat impassive in the court as the court registrar read out the verdicts. Two women in the Gilligan family group seated at the back of the court to support Mr Gilligan wept as the ‘not guilty’ verdicts were called out, while the parents of the then-12-year-old sitting on the opposite side of the court left the courtroom shortly after the verdicts were announced.
The jury delivered their majority not-guilty verdict after five hours and three minutes of deliberations and returned to the court 48 minutes after Judge Francis Comerford directed they could deliver a majority 11-1 or 10-2 verdict.
READ MORE
Shortly after midday the judge told the jury they could make a 11-1 or 10-2 majority verdict in the case. The jury had been deliberating since Tuesday and when asked if they were given more time would they reach a unanimous verdict, the foreman replied “No”.
The jury reached their verdicts after five days of evidence, closing speech by lawyers from both sides and the judge’s charge in the case.
The judge thanked the seven men and five women “for the careful deliberations you have taken”.
A farmer and auctioneer in Sixmilebridge, Mr Gilligan was not on legal aid for the case and will have to pay his legal bill from the six-day-long trial from his own resources.
In his closing speech to the jury on Monday, counsel for Mr Gilligan, Patrick Whyms, said that on the evening at the Jamaica Inn hostel, Mr Gilligan “didn’t know that he was dealing with a child and did not create this situation”.
Mr Whyms, instructed by solicitor Daragh Hassett, said Mr Gilligan “was at the end of his tether” by the vandalism being done to a vacant property he was trying to sell.
Putting forward the defence of reasonable force against the charge, Mr Whyms said Mr Gilligan was at the Jamaica Inn Hostel on the night of October 5th “in the dark and believed that he was under siege”.
He needed to “make an instant decision and so we are here”.
Mr Whyms said: “And Mr Gilligan, a family man who has young children and no previous convictions, gives a clear story which hasn’t changed and an entirely credible, fulsome account of what happened.”
In his prepared statement at Shannon Garda station in February 2024 on the alleged assault, Mr Whyms said, Mr Gilligan gave “a perfectly plausible account in an otherwise impeccably accurate description of what occurred which placed the boys inside the building when he met them”.
On the medical evidence, Mr Whyms said: “Nobody wants to see a child being injured and it would be much better if that didn’t happen and the boy was injured in this case.”
He said a displaced fracture of the boy’s finger is the “only fracture in this case”.
“There were injuries ... sustained in the incident but by and large, most were cleared up in the week and the last one was pretty well cleared up in two weeks,” he said.
In her closing speech, prosecuting barrister Sarah Jane Comerford told the jury: “This is a story of a man who lost his cool”.
Ms Comerford said Mr Gilligan “lost control and punished the boy for the damage and inconvenience caused to his property on a morning when he had to clean up human faeces and urine from his property”.
