The Special Criminal Court is considering its verdict in the trial of Mr Paul Ward, the man accused of murdering journalist Veronica Guerin, after defence submissions finished yesterday.
Mr Justice Barr, presiding, said there was a great deal of evidence and many legal issues raised in the submissions to consider.
He said the court would not give its verdict before 2 p.m. tomorrow. It was the 31st day of the trial of Mr Ward (34), from Crumlin, Dublin, with an address at Walkinstown Road, Dublin, who has pleaded not guilty to the murder of journalist Veronica Guerin (36), a mother of one, at the Naas Road, Clondalkin, Co Dublin on June 26th, 1996.
The prosecution has claimed Mr Ward was a member of the gang that planned and carried out the killing and that he disposed of the murder weapon and the motorcycle afterwards when the killers called to his house.
Concluding his submissions yesterday, Mr Ward's counsel, Mr Patrick MacEntee SC, told the three judges at the non-jury court they had to perform the impossible task of being both judges of law and fact. He said Mr Ward would have been the "last man in the world" that one would have thought of to ask to take the murder weapon.
Mr MacEntee said the verbal admissions allegedly made by Mr Ward were totally dictated in the context of State witness Charles Bowden's statement to the gardai.
Counsel told the judges there was a danger they could become "case hardened".
He asked them to consider what a sensible man from "another walk of life", having heard the evidence, would do in this case.
Would he be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt about the alleged verbal admissions made by Mr Ward and would he be satisfied with the evidence of Charles Bowden?
Earlier Mr MacEntee said Bowden "was not by any standards, even the least demanding, an honest man.
"He is a man who tells lies when it suits him to tell lies and seems to tell these lies simply because he wants to," he said.
Counsel said Bowden was "brazen enough" to tell lies to the judges' faces when giving his evidence. "The crux of his problem is that he can't tell the truth. He is all the time telling lies for a great variety of reasons, he is telling lies to save his bacon, telling lies to save his face."
Mr MacEntee said that in his evidence Bowden had attributed to Mr Ward his own activities as a member of the drugs gang.