A letter from State protected witness Charles Bowden to the Department of Justice, written after the trial of Paul Ward for the murder of Veronica Guerin, showed Bowden was still seeking guarantees for his future security although he had told the judges at the Ward trial his future was secure, the Court of Criminal Appeal heard yesterday.
It was clear Bowden regarded his future security as dependent on his "performance" at the trials of Ward and others and whether convictions were secured, Mr Barry White SC, for Ward, said.
It had also emerged, from evidence Bowden gave in the subsequent trial of John Gilligan that, after the Ward trial opened on October 2nd 1998 and prior to Bowden taking the witness stand in November 1998, Bowden was seeking to improve his position about what was on offer to him from the State, counsel added.
Bowden had also admitted at the Gilligan trial that, when he was giving evidence in the Ward trial, his future position was "not completely" secure. Mr White contended all of this gave Bowden a reason to perform well and help secure convictions of his former associates.
Mr White said the CCA should look to decisions of the Northern Ireland appeal courts which had overturned convictions based on "supergrass" evidence. He argued the non-jury Special Criminal Court, in convicting Ward, had started from the wrong premise - that Bowden was a credible witness. The court should have started on the basis he was not credible and then moved to querying if there was any reason to believe him. There was not and Ward’s conviction should be quashed.
He said the SCC had also made several errors of fact in its judgment and it was on foot of those errors that it had returned a guilty verdict. If this had been a jury case, the defence could have addressed those errors prior to the jury going out to consider their verdict through asking the judge to correct them or through discharging the jury. There was no such option in Ward’s case. On that basis alone, the conviction should be overturned.
Yesterday was the third day of the appeal by Ward (37), with an address at Walkinstown, Dublin. He is serving a life sentence for the murder of Ms Guerin (36), a Sunday Independentjournalist, at Naas Road, Clondalkin, on June 26th, 1996.
Submissions for Ward concluded yesterday. Mr Peter Charleton SC, for the DPP, then opened his submissions.
Mr Charleton said there were four planks of the DPP’s case against Ward - evidence of what happened on the Naas Road; evidence of Charles Bowden; evidence of Detective Sergeant John Geraghty in relation to conflicting accounts by Ward of who was with him around the time of Ms Guerin’s shooting and Paul Ward’s statements.
The prosecution had advanced "a rational hypothesis" which was that, after the shooting of Ms Guerin by a pillion passenger on a motorcyle, the motorcyle sped to a "convenient bolthole" - Paul Ward’s house in Walkinstown. That hypothesis was advanced on the basis of inspection of Ward’s home which had a lock-up garage at the rear. The murder weapon and the motorcycle were "a package" and Ward’s role was to dispose of those.
Counsel agreed he had no hypothesis relating to how the killers knew a red traffic light would have stopped Ms Guerin’s car at the location on the Naas Road. It would have been known Ms Guerin would be in Naas that day and she was followed from there, he said.
Bowden’s evidence was that there was a discussion at a meeting at Brian Meehan’s apartment, on either a Friday or Saturday in the week or two before the murder, about Veronica Guerin and about John Gilligan wanting something done about her. Bowden had placed Ward at that meeting.
Bowden had also placed Ward in a car with Meehan, Bowden and another man where there was a conversation about going to a graveyard and getting a gun. Bowden had said Meehan had looked at Ward and said "we’ll" get the gun. Ward had remained silent and that could be used against him. Bowden’s evidence was consistent with the events of June 26th, 1996.
Mr Charleton accepted there was no evidence that the motorcyle used in the killing went back to Ward’s house but argued the court could reasonably infer, from the events of the Naas Road, that was what had happened.
The appeal court should also look to Ward’s own evidence at his trial, counsel said. Ward had agreed he was a major drugs dealer, that he knew John Gilligan as a kind of friend, that he collected money for Gilligan and that the latter would have trusted him.
Ward had also agreed he had not instructed his lawyers that Bowden had played more of a role in Ms Guerin’s murder than Bowden had claimed. The SCC had rejected the entire of Ward’s evidence insofar as it tended to exculpate Ward.
In relation to the attack on Bowden’s credibility, the CCA could not substitute its own view on the quality of Bowden’s evidence for that taken by the trial court, Mr Charleton submitted.
He said Ward had a motive insofar as he was earning some £3,000 a week through his link with John Gilligan and Veronica Guerin had preferred assault charges against Gilligan which could have resulted in Gilligan being jailed.
Mr Charleton added the court should further look to phone records indicating some 19 phone calls between Ward and Brian Meehan on the day of the murder.
The appeal continues today.
