All of the evidence has been heard, the speeches have been made, the trial of Paddy Jackson, Stuart Olding, Blane McIIroy and Rory Harrison is coming to an end.
The atmosphere in the courtroom is on a pendulum swing with each phase of the trial. This week it hit a ball of tiredness.
Barristers paused to give their voices a break, distracted by the sound of typing. The jury who have been sitting three weeks longer than expected have been through the mill. There have been countless unavoidable delays, something that is to be expected in trials of this length, a juror illness, a funeral, a Saturday sitting, a house visit.
More than once this week the defence barristers thanked the jury for their patience and diligence.
As both sides and five legal teams have rested their case, attention now moves to the jury.
The judge began her charge to the jury on Friday, where she reminded them that is for them and them alone to decide what evidence they accept and reject.
Before reading from a 23-page transcript that detailed the charges against the defendants and the things the jury need to be sure of if they are to return a verdict of guilty, the judge told the jury that while they are entitled to draw common sense conclusions, they may only decide the case based on the evidence.
The charges are as follows: Paddy Jackson is charged with one count of rape and one count of sexual assault. Stuart Olding is charged with oral rape. Blane McIlroy is charged with one count of exposure. Rory Harrison is charged with perverting the course of justice and withholding information. Each of the men deny all charges against them.
Judge Patricia Smyth told the jury that while they may be inclined to feel sympathy for the complainant who showed obvious distress when giving evidence, that “distress wasn’t necessarily a sign of truth or honesty”.
“The morals of any person involved in this trial are completely irrelevant in this trial,” said the judge, before telling the jury that they “must not jump to the conclusion that a criminal offence has been committed because you don’t agree with the sexual behaviour”.
Rory Harrison’s barrister, Gavan Duffy, had earlier reminded the 11 jurors, in his summing up that they were chosen because they do not know the defendants, they had no awareness of the case prior to the trial beginning and because they carry no prejudice for the four men.
“You are the ones with the power,” he told them. Standing just feet from their box and leaning on his wooden lectern, he used his left hand to emphasise his words, making bullet points in the air. “You are the ones with the power,” he repeated.
Duffy reminded the jury that they will never have to explain their decision to anyone, the only limitation to their power is the ability to undo their verdict. There is no accommodation for regret once a verdict is delivered.
Duffy told the jury there should be no sympathy or prejudice in their minds as they make their final decisions. He asked them to consider a situation that it was their loved one in the defendants’ dock and they were sitting in the public gallery. What would be going through their minds as they looked to the jury box? They would want the jury to be careful, considered and fair, answered Duffy to his own question.
Just as each of the defence barristers this week began their speeches with reminders to the jury of the high standard of proof that was required for them to return a verdict of guilty, each of the defence barristers then made the case to the jury that the prosecution had not provided them with that proof and, without it, it is their duty to acquit.
The prosecution’s case against the men was criticised heavily. Rory Harrison’s counsel said there may even be confusion on the jury’s part as to what the charges against Rory Harrison even related to.
Both the police investigation and the prosecution’s case was labelled a disgrace by Arthur Harvey QC, Blane McIIroy’s defence, who said that the first time there was any actual investigation into the woman’s allegations was in the courtroom.
Harvey labelled the trial a tragedy, not only for his client, who has not been able to complete his university degree in the US, but for society at large who will suffer as their faith in the justice system may flag because of the poor handling and investigation of the case.
He asked the jury to consider which was more likely: that the prosecution did not know how to handle the truth or that Blane McIIroy, who is on trial for indecent exposure, had incriminated himself to a potentially much more serious charge – that of oral rape – in order to protect his friends, as the prosecution suggested.
The woman, Harvey said, was an unreliable witness and her allegations were never properly investigated.
This criticism was taken up by Stuart Olding’s defence, Frank O’ Donoghue QC.
Olding’s barrister said the woman’s evidence was of “hopeless quality and the “investigation, testing and evaluation of this complainant was at best poor and at worst virtually non-existent”. The police, O’Donoghue said, did not probe the allegation made by the woman who was a 19-year-old student at the time.
Olding’s barrister said that when the police got layer upon layer of evidence from Mr Olding that indicated consent, they should have interviewed the complainant a third time.
O’Donoghue reminded the jury that both the complainant and Olding said oral sex had occurred. What is in dispute, however, is consent. The oral sex was not a “forced act”, said O’Donoghue, but an “entirely consensual one”.
Olding’s defence paused a beat before saying, “perhaps one she came to regret”.
The evidence of consent is objectively compelling he told the jury and is so because of the duration of the oral sex (5 minutes), Olding’s ejaculation and the three interruptions to the act – when the complainant took her top off, when Dara Florence walked in and the complainant turned her head away, and when the complainant asked for condoms.
Olding’s counsel then went on to list the dozen questions he thinks the police and later the prosecution should have asked the woman, no matter how uncomfortable it may have been for her.
-Why did she open her mouth?
-Why didn’t she close her mouth?
-Why would she not say no?
-Why didn’t she scream? There were three middle-class girls downstairs who wouldn’t tolerate rape.
-How was oral sex actually being performed if her head was constantly being pushed down?
-What position was she in when the act commenced?
-How long did it go on for?
-How did it come to an end?
-Why didn’t she scream the house down?
-Where were her hands – were they on his penis and how did that happen if she was being forced downwards?
-Did oral sex stop because she stopped it or because Stuart Olding wanted it to stop?
-What did Stuart Olding do when the oral sex stopped?
-How did she get back on to her back when she was down on her knees?
O’ Donoghue said that, while the PSNI officers were reluctant to put any pressure on the complainant, “Stuart Olding’s encounter with the police was quite the reverse”.
O’ Donoghue reminded the jury that the police went to Olding’s employers at Ulster Rugby first rather than contacting Olding directly, that he was put in a holding cell for hours and that he had to provide medical swabs of his DNA, a “medically intrusive process” where Olding had to provide a buccal swab of his mouth, scrapings from his fingernails as well as three swabs of his penis.
The entire portion of the police interview, relating to Stuart Olding, runs to one and a half pages said his barrister. That is it yet the complainant’s evidence, when you peel it back, has “no detail- just her word” and in this trial, Olding’s defence told the jury, everything must be second guessed before it can be relied upon.
If the police and the prosecution had really studied the evidence, O’ Donoghue told the jury, it would have been apparent to them that the complainant’s evidence wasn’t reliable.
It is clear, O’Donoghue said, neither police nor prosecution then have ever really understood the evidence.
The complaints with the police continued from Rory Harrison’s defence counsel, Gavan Duffy QC.
Duffy told the jury that the police did not give Harrison his witness statement from June when he asked for it before being re-interviewed in October, in order to make it more difficult for him.
And while the rape crime unit “bent over backwards” to find evidence to support the woman’s allegations they ignored everything that didn’t, Rory Harrison, Duffy said, was not treated fairly by the police.
The barrister from Northern Ireland said to the jury he could understand if they were in a state of confusion as to what the charges against Rory Harrison even related to.
He told the jury that the prosecution’s case in relation to the charge of withholding information doesn’t have a single leg to stand on, and it is nothing but “a series of allegations that changed and changed, and came down to speculation and supposition, sound bites and nothing at all to do with the evidence”.
Rory Harrison didn’t have to give a witness statement in June 2016. He could have told the police it was his birthday. He was tired, but instead he sat down with them for an hour and a half, Harrison’s defence reminded the jury. He could have called his Dad who is a solicitor and asked for advice but instead he answered every question.
The fact that Rory Harrison didn’t show the police the text message from the complainant saying that what happened was not-consensual would only matter if that text would have helped with the apprehension and future conviction of the men involved and, Duffy told the jury, it is nonsense to argue, as the prosecution did, that it would have.
Rory Harrison is not a weasel, said his defence, he is a decent man.
Coming to the close of his speech Harrison’s defence asked the jury to consider themselves in a similar position – what if it had been their loved one that was accused of a crime by someone they themselves did not know?
Harrison’s decency of character is in fact proven by the fact he said the complainant was a “silly little girl” and, as Duffy suggested to the jury, if it had been any of them in a similar situation, they may well have said something stronger.
In her address the judge asked the jury to bear in mind that communications between friends have to be seen in that context and WhatsApps are likely to be misconstrued.
And that even if a man holds a derogatory opinion of women that does not mean he holds an intention to have non-consensual sex, said the Judge. Men may use expressions that are common parlance between themselves but that might not reflect what they actually think.
The jury will hear the remainder of the judge’s directions on Monday and they will begin deliberations next week.
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