Conor Lally was at the Criminal Courts of Justice on Monday when Gerry ‘the Monk’ Hutch was acquitted of the murder of David Byrne at the Regency Hotel in Dublin in 2016.
He seemed, says Lally, stunned as he walked from the court. There was no car there to whisk him off, instead he and his legal team attempted to flag down a passing taxi. As was clear as the verdict was handed down by Ms Justice Tara Burns of the three-judge, non-jury Special Criminal Court, the evidence simply was not there to convict the well-known figure from Dublin gangland for the murder.
He was however adjudged to have had control of the murder weapons after the attack and the court also accepted that the Hutch family were responsible, but the DPP had opted for a specific charge of murder which was not proven.
As Irish Times crime and security editor, Lally has been writing gangland crime for more than a decade. He says the shooting at the hotel was a turning point in how gangland is policed in Ireland – it was, he said, as key an event in terms of its repercussions as the murder of journalist Veronica Guerin.
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