The Court of Criminal Appeal has reserved its judgment in the appeal of Co Mayo farmer Pádraig Nally, who was jailed for six years for shooting dead a Traveller on his land in 2004.
Nally's counsel, Brendan Grehan SC, said the trial judge Mr Justice Paul Carney had erred in law by not allowing the jury to consider a defence of self-defence and by not allowing it to bring in an acquittal.
At the trial Mr Justice Carney told the jury it could only bring in a verdict of either guilty of murder or guilty of manslaughter.
Justice Nicholas Kearns, presiding at the three-judge appeal court, said the court would reserve its judgment. A judgment is expected in the new law term, which begins next October.
Nally (62), who was appealing his conviction for the manslaughter of John "Frog" Ward (42), a father of 11, was sentenced to six years in jail last November. In July last year, a jury found the farmer, of Funshinaugh, Cross, Co Mayo, not guilty of the murder of Mr Ward but guilty of his manslaughter. He had been shot twice and beaten with a stick.
The second and fatal shot was fired after Mr Ward, from Carrowbrowne halting site on the outskirts of Galway city, had left the farmyard on October 14th, 2004, and was limping down the road. During his trial, Nally told the Central Criminal Court that he never intended to kill Mr Ward.
In his defence, he told the jury that in the 18 months before the shooting, there were two break- ins at his property and he was growing increasingly paranoid and fearful and believed his life was under threat.
Mr Grehan submitted that the single point of appeal against Nally's conviction was an important constitutional point. He said that was whether or not there were any circumstances in which a trial judge could direct a jury that it must convict in the absence of a concession by the defence that acquittal was not an option in the case. He said that in this case the trial judge had done so at the request of the prosecution.
Mr Grehan submitted that there was a difference between self-defence and provocation because provocation could be raised only with the leave of the trial judge. He said Mr Justice Carney had explicitly told the jury that there were only two verdicts he would receive from it - either murder or manslaughter and that it could not acquit Nally.
Paul O'Higgins SC, for the DPP, submitted that acquittal did not arise in the circumstances of the Nally case. He said that it was not what force the jury considered to be reasonable but what force a reasonable man would have considered necessary in the circumstances.
There was no evidence that Mr Ward was perceived to have offered any threat of any description to Mr Nally at the point when the gun was reloaded and he followed him out of his house.
The only thing to Nally's knowledge was that Mr Ward's son had left in his car and might come back with other people or with a knife or an iron bar.