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 was told yesterday.
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, that he 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 court 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 Special Criminal Court 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.
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 Independent journalist, 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 Det Sgt John Geraghty in relation to conflicting accounts by Ward of who was with him around the time of Ms Guerin's shooting and Ward's own statements.
The prosecution had advanced "a rational hypothesis" which was that, after the shooting of Ms Guerin by a pillion passenger on a motorcycle, the motorcycle 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.
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 motorcycle 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, that he collected money for Gilligan and that the latter would have trusted him.
The appeal continues today.
