Defence counsel in the murder trial of Joe O'Reilly warned the jury against being swayed by media attention to the case. In his closing speech, Patrick Gageby SC urged the jury not to court popularity by finding Mr O'Reilly guilty.
He said he wasn't going to try to convince them Mr O'Reilly was innocent, but said all he had to do was to satisfy them that a reasonable doubt existed.
He said the only requirement for them to reach a verdict of not guilty is that they should have a "reasonable doubt" about Mr O'Reilly's guilt and if so, they must acquit him. He reminded them their verdict was "irreversible".
He told the jury that Mr O'Reilly's likeability shouldn't influence their decision. He asked them to ask themselves if the accused in this case was not a man who was having an affair, and hadn't used bad language when describing his wife, whether it would be a lot easier to given him the benefit of the doubt?
"One thing clear in this case is that the prosecution has sought to bring in as much discrediting conduct as it can, and as is relevant, but much of what they did bring in, we say is irrelevant."
He added: "We're not looking in moral judgment in this case. This is not a court of morality - this is a court of law," he said.
"The one thing you can see is that since the death of Rachel O'Reilly, a torrent of media attention has been focused on this case." Mr Gageby said the sheer number of people in court puts pressure on the jury. "You might ask what verdict does the press want in this case. What will sell more papers?"
He added: "I think you know what the answer to that is."
He said that although the publicity hadn't been saying Mr O'Reilly is guilty, the coverage has been "insidious, covert and hidden". He added: "It's entirely suggestive. You know the verdict the press desire," he said.
"Do you know that the most difficult thing to do in the world is to be unpopular?" he said.
He reminded them of other instances of miscarriages of justice when innocent people were convicted of crimes because of an atmosphere of horror.
He cited the Guildford Four, the Birmingham Six and Nora Wall as examples. "We have to be careful ourselves not to get sucked into something like that," he said.
He said what all these cases had in common was an "undercurrent of fear". He urged them to keep media reports out of their decision-making and to consider how they may have been "persuaded unconsciously" by them. "Popularity is not an attribute for justice," he said. "Judges make unpopular decisions. You are 11 judges in this case."
On the e-mails between Mr O'Reilly and his sister Ann, he said while the language in them was abusive, "he's not the first person, and he's not the last", to use such language when talking about their spouse from whom they want to separate.
Referring to the loving language Mr O'Reilly used in texts to his lover, Nikki Pelley, he said: "What do you expect him to say? 'I'd like you for sex, or something like that'?" He said Mr O'Reilly is a man who has never been in trouble before, and that he was having an affair. "We're not talking about wife beating. He used bad language. So what? Where's the homicide?"
He said the witness, John Austin, gave evidence that Mr O'Reilly told him he was going to leave his wife and wanted to rent an apartment in Balbriggan to be close to the children. He said there was something a bit odd about a father who loves his children and kills his wife. "They are of course depriving their children of a mother," he said.
"In this context, anyone who has an affair is in the firing line for murder," he said.
Mr Gageby said that there was only an 18-minute period in which he could have done it, from the time Ms O'Reilly's car was seen passing Murphy's Quarry at 9.41am to the time the suspect car was seen going away from the house at 9.59am.
The prosecution are suggesting: "This man darted home, killed his wife, and darted back. You have to decide how all of that stacks up, if it does," he said.
Referring to the prosecution's belief that Mr O'Reilly showered after the murder, he said it was obvious the bedroom was an appalling scene of carnage and the perpetrator must have been covered in blood. However, there was no scientific basis to prove that the attacker had a shower. If that had been the case, the forensic team should have noticed the bathroom was freshly scrubbed.
There was no blood found on Mr O'Reilly's clothes or his car.
Mr Gageby said the theory is that after Mr O'Reilly killed his wife, he drove through Blake's Cross and that this was captured on CCTV footage. He said they already heard evidence of the vast amount of CCTV footage collected by gardaí all over Dublin, and he asked why they thought no image of the car was captured south of Blake's Cross. He said the absence of this image was "the big white elephant" in the prosecution's case.
Mr Gageby said the case was largely dependent on science and warned them against being unquestioningly reliant on the mobile phone records as evidence.
He insisted the important thing about Derek Quearney's evidence was that he said he "believed" he saw Mr O'Reilly in the depot before 10am.
He reminded the jury of the evidence of a number of witnesses who passed by the house at about this time who knew the O'Reilly family but who did not see his car there.
He said the prosecution case was based on "innuendo, suspicion and allegation and a little bit of other stuff mixed up in that", and was "wholly circumstantial".
"This is a case in which you are being asked to marry a large amount of suspicion with little bit of science," he said.