The judge in the murder trial of Joe O'Reilly has told the jury not to discuss the case with anyone outside the jury or to allow anyone outside the jury to talk to them about it.
Mr Justice Barry White was speaking today at the end of the 17th day of the trial of Mr O'Reilly (35) of Lambay View, Baldarragh, Naul, Co Dublin who has pleaded not guilty to murdering his 30 year-old wife and mother of two, Rachel O'Reilly, at the family home on October 4th 2004.
Mr Justice White told the jury: "The case has attracted a large amount of interest and as you have seen, there are a considerable number of citizens who wish to come in and listen to it".
He said: "there is concern that somebody might inadvertently seek to discuss matters with one of your number and not realise that you are from the jury in this case."
He added there was 'no unease' that this might have already taken place but alerted them to the possibility of this happening.
Most of the day's evidence was from an expert image analyst who said the car belonging to murder accused Joe O'Reilly "could be" the car seen in CCTV footage near the O'Reilly home on the morning of the murder.
Image analyst Andrew Laws, from Calligate Imagery Bureau in England, said gardai gave him CCTV footage from the morning of the murder along with reconstruction images and asked him to compare a number of vehicles.
He told prosecuting counsel Mr Dominic McGinn BL that he compiled three reports after analysing the footage.
Evidence from the first report related to CCTV footage from Murphy's Quarry, near the O'Reilly home. Mr Laws said he compared the original footage from the morning of the murder with 'reconstruction' images made by gardai.
However, he said: "A reconstruction is not a replication." By making these comparisons, he was hoping to be able to use his expert knowledge to give an opinion as to the likelihood of the two vehicles being one in the same.
Referring to the first set of images at Murphy's Quarry, he said there were a number of factors making it difficult for him to analyse the cars, including: the quality of the images; the difference in the weather; the glare of the sun; and angles.
He looked at an image of the 'suspect car' at 09:08:52 on the morning of the murder, going towards the O'Reilly house at Murphy's Quarry and compared it with the image of Mr O'Reilly's Fiat Marea estate car being driven in the same direction by gardai.
He said he was 'unable to eliminate' the possibility of the suspect car being the same as Mr O'Reilly's. Asked by Mr McGinn whether this meant the suspect vehicle 'could be' Mr
O'Reilly's car, he said: "that's correct."
Among the factors which led him to draw this conclusion was the fact that the two cars had the same 'general shape.' However he said the outline was blurred and admitted the "it comes across as a fairly crude analysis."
Referring to a roof rack he knew to be on Mr O'Reilly's car, he said there was some evidence to show such a roof rack was on the suspect car, but admitted that if he had not known about the rack on Mr O'Reilly's car, he would not have seen it on the suspect vehicle.
He said his conclusion was: "that the two images give moderate support to the contention that the two vehicles were of the same make and model." The trial before Mr Justice Barry White and a jury of nine men and two women continues tomorrow.