GUBU 2/22

  

 ....(continued)....

On 22/02/2022 Keith Greene fell slowly into what used to be a golf bunker. He had taken a bullet to his brain through the back of his head, from a distance of around two metres. 

                                                                    THE TRIAL

The trial began on 16 October 2024. It was meant to begin on 30 May 2024, but there was an unspecified (and still mysterious) ''issue with an expert report which could not be resolved immediately'' and the judge adjourned the trial ''with considerable reluctance'' until October. Phelan was represented by two senior counsel, the Bar Counsil Chairman Sean Guerin SC and Michael Bowman SC. The state/DPP was likewise represented by two senior counsel, Rosin Lacey SC and John Byrne SC. And the judge Ms. Justice Siobhan Lankford also held the same legal rank as the accused.

Phelan cycled to the Central Criminal Court, wearing protective head gear and occasionally sporting a high vis vest with 'Think Farm Safety' printed on it. He entered the court by the same side entrance which is used by judges and other legal professionals, not by the public entrance. Inside, he would often go into the Law Library and move freely among the barristers there. No complaint was made to the judge about his being allowed to do this, though it was surely disconcerting for prosecution barristers to see the accused acting as if he was one of them.

A jury of nine men and three women was appointed. The imbalance may arguably have favoured a defendant with a love of guns. Stephen Connelly, writing in Trinity News, described how one juror was replaced because his girlfriend was from Tallaght. But no such restriction was placed on jurors with ''a possible connection to Phelan, be it geographical, professional, or otherwise''. 

Phelan could be seen in court being comforted by an elderly man who wore the uniform of a priest. He could also be seen passing notes to his counsel. But he did not give evidence himself. Where this is mentioned in the media, it is always said that he had a legal right not to submit to cross-examination. This is technically true, but such a stand, or non-stand, attracts assumptions of guilt for the average accused person. The only possible exceptions are where the accused is liable to bring (gang related) retribution on his own head or where he might self-incriminate through inarticulate nervousness.

Regardless of such exceptions, Phelan chose to take a different road when he handed over a prepared statement to Gardai in October 2022. It tidied up his story, as these things do, and introduced evidence of outside threat such as masked and armed men being near his house at night. Even if the statement was not technically an affidavit, it was clearly designed to have the same effect as an affidavit and a copy of it would almost certainly have been given to each jury member. The prosecution counsel therefore had every right to cross-examine him on its content. But they made no move to do so. This was particularly galling for supporters of the deceased, as Phelan was never required to resolve the contradiction between his claim to have been acting in self-defence and his claim to have shot Greene accidentally. His counsel was instead allowed to plead both positions.

                                                                       *****

The deceased was spoken of in court and in the media as a violent criminal. The only evidence to back this up was an incident following a burglary which took place 12 years before his death, when Greene kicked a Garda in the head to escape arrest. A quote of ''extremely violent'' to describe his behaviour that day was widely reported, but the quote came from defence counsel Sean Guerin SC, not from any witness. An RTE report did say that witness Garda Sergeant Simon Whelan ''agreed that Mr Conlon (*) became extremely violent when put in the back of a police car'', but every other report I've read says something similar to ''The witness agreed with the lawyers that Garda McDonnell had been kicked in the head by Mr Conlon, who had become extremely violent and had to be restrained ...'' 

Extreme violence means serious injury, and no evidence was provided in 2024, or in 2010, of any significant injury to anyone being caused by Greene. Sergeant Whelan was being questioned about his inability to say that bird-shot was not used in Phelan's revolver and about Greene's links to the travelling community (did no one object to this line of questioning?) when Guerin raised the incident. Sergeant Whelan knew about it and said that the kick was a Section 2 assault - which made it less serious than the (Wexford) one with which Phelan was charged on 19 April 2022.

Greene's youthful wrong turn - made before he had learned how to work the system - won out over information from the Garda Pulse system, where criminal activity attributed to him is recorded as ''Burglar, drug dealer, drug user, larceny from cars, receiver, handles (stolen) property, shoplifter, UT merchant (robber of and fence for stolen cars)''. He is also recorded as keeping restricted dog breeds without muzzling or appropriate housing. It's an impressive criminal CV (for which he apparently did no time at all), but it is notably non-violent and would, if anyone had brought it to the jury's attention, have undermined the defence's attempt to brand Greene a violent rather than career criminal.

Greene's only known crime on the day is one of trespassing. The court showed no interest in whether he was engaged in illegal badger hunting or legal fox hunting, probably because it was more likely to have been the latter [Foxes have no legal protection here, because many posh people enjoy attacking them]. Greene's love of hunting was another thing which was used against him in court. This was a bit rich, as his killer admitted to also being a dog killer and further claimed to use crow-shot. 

There is no record of any photos of the dead Vin being shown to the jury members (a photo of his tether was shown to them and the dead dog was briefly seen on Greene's self-recorded video). But eight hunting videos which were found on Greene's phone were shown to the jury and, unusually for the case, given a good amount of publicity in the media. There were videos of dogs attacking a squirrel and a badger. Kallum Coleman was connected in some way to many of the videos. And his dog was in most, if not all, of the videos.

Considering that Judge Lankford denied, on grounds of irrelevance, the prosecution's request to mention that Gardai had found two sniper rifles in Phelan's bedroom, it is hard to understand why she admitted any of this. The judge did rule out the showing of a video of a blooding exercise in which two dogs were encouraged to attack a kitten in a cage. This video, which was reported as having been ''recorded on Mr Conlon's phone - from November 2021'', oddly has no human or canine participants to link it to the other videos. There is surely a strong possibility that it was either sent to Greene's phone or downloaded by him, not recorded by him. I'm not sure why the judge permitted defence counsel Sean Guerin SC to describe to the jury what was (without seeing the video) only hearsay evidence or why the media allowed it to become such a big part of their meagre trial coverage. But all of the videos put together, even when taken at face value, amounted only to evidence that Greene took part in illegal hunting - which no one was denying in the first place.

Every little dig at the dead man led incrementally to a position where his death could only elicit a shrugging of the shoulders. Nobody from the family and friends who turned up in court was called into the box to challenge any of it. The end result was that the roguish Greene was now fixed in the public mind (and presumably in the minds of the jurors) as a man who was quick to violence and one who enjoyed torturing little kittens. 

* Keith Conlon was the name used for Keith Greene in court and in the media, for unexplained reasons.

 

                                                                   EXPERTS

During a Garda ballistics expert's testimony, prosecution counsel John Byrne SC asked questions relating to the accuracy of the revolver over a distance of five metres - though only one witness had suggested such a distance. The State Pathologist could only say it was more than a metre, which apparently pleased Phelan's team (they had their own pathologist ready to go, as you do, but chose not to call him or her). But anything more than 2.5 metres makes no sense based on everyone else's evidence, including Phelan's, and any possibility of the shooting being accidental surely required the parties to have been very close to each other. 

Byrne offered the judge and jury an opportunity to hold the revolver and pull the trigger, in order to experience the 5kg of pressure required to shoot it. Exactly what Byrne hoped to achieve with this only he can say. Eight of the twelve jurors pulled the trigger. Four declined the offer, as did the judge. I wonder at the psychological effect of pulling the trigger on a gun which had killed a person when last fired, while the man who had done it watched on.

Phelan had two American witnesses, Curtis Marshall and William J. Lewinski, who were said to be experts in the fields of firearms and behavioural science respectively. It was not revealed if the men were paid for their testimonies (Lewinski charges around $1,000 an hour in the US), but they were surely paid their expenses in getting to and staying in Ireland. Marshall is a former Special Agent with the US Department of Justice and Lewinski has also been hired by the Department of Justice, though on one occasion the department denounced his teachings as ''lacking in both foundation and reliability''.

 Marshall testified that people under stress tend to ''jerk the trigger'', ''shoot faster than they can observe changes in their environment'' and lose their grip. This is plausible in a general sense, but it is does not tally with Phelan's own evidence. Lewinski testified that Phelan's decision to fire what he called ''warning shots'' was a reasonable response ''given the perception of an imminent threat and the short time available for decision making'', causing an ''unintentional strike'' on one of the intruders. 

Matt Apuzzo wrote a decade ago in the New York Times that Lewinski ''has helped justify countless shootings around the country'' and ''His conclusions are consistent: The officer acted appropriately, even when shooting an unarmed person. Even when shooting someone in the back.''. And Lewinski's company, ''the Force Science Institute, has trained tens of thousand of police officers on how to think differently about police shootings that might appear excessive.''.

At least in the US, Lewinski's reputation preceded him and juries were presumably informed as to his financial-political stance. John Byrne SC did establish from Lewinski that just 3 out of the ''about 300'' cases in which he had given evidence had been for the prosecution, with none of them happening in the last 25 years. God only knows what was he doing, giving evidence in a country with no gun culture, where police are not armed and on behalf of a defendant who was not a policeman.

                                                                 VANISHING ACT

Witnesses disappearing is not a good look for a people which aspires to having honest courts (is that us?). The most important witness for the deceased was his friend Kallum Coleman. He was to have given evidence on 30 October 2024. Instead he took off to Spain on the 28th and the court surely had some knowledge of this when the judge issued a bench warrant against him on the 30th, e.g. it was known he hadn't suffered an accident in Dublin. 

In Coleman's absence, Detective Garda Damien Reilly and Garda Sergeant Simon Whelan (above) were questioned (was there a wait while they were contacted?). Reilly testified that Duggan, not Coleman, had ''numerous concerns'' about making a statement and didn't want to be viewed as a rat. The case was adjourned on the 31st ''for reasons outside (the judge's) control'' which were not explained. In adjourning the case again on November 1st, a very patient Judge Lankford told the jury that ''the next prosecution witness is not available to the court today''. She said, ''Sorry about the delay, if we could have done something about it sooner we would have. It can't be helped.'' 

At Coleman's later trial for contempt of court, prosecution counsel Roisin Lacey SC would describe his absence as ''crucial'' and Judge Lankford would describe his ungiven evidence as ''vital''. It might have been argued that his evidence was so important that the case would have to be adjourned until he was present and that, Phelan being on bail, the wait would be no great imposition on anyone. But that argument was never made. 

It is notable that this hugely dramatic development received little and possibly zero contemporary coverage in a media which must have known about it. It appears that Coleman's name was never mentioned in court on the days of the adjournments, but the journalists must have known. A public campaign could have put pressure on Coleman to come back in the interests of justice and friendship. He reportedly did not want to be considered ''a rat'' and went so far as to claim he would commit suicide before he would give evidence against Phelan. This made no sense on any level.

The jury was told that Robin Duggan also wanted to avoid being considered a rat and had refused to make a formal statement or give evidence for that reason. But Coleman and Duggan had both spoken to Gardai on the day of the shootings and that evidence was provided to the jury. Both men told Garda Damien Reilly that they would provide statements after the shock of what happened had left them. Bizarrely, the prosecution made no attempt to call Duggan as a witness. Neither he nor Coleman was a member of an organisation or profession which might cause a threat to the integrity of his evidence. Their friend was shot and killed, something for which they bore no responsibility. That was all there was to it.

Acting on the bench warrant issues on October 30th and working off information about where Coleman was staying, Garda Detective Sergeant John or Michael McGrath (both names have been reported, Michael McGrath being involved from the start and the man who arrested Phelan) flew to Malaga on 5 November 2024 with one other Garda. He would tell the court on 20 January 2025 that they found Coleman at a hotel in Marbella a day later. They did not have jurisdiction to issue the warrant against Coleman in Spain, so they needed his cooperation. Luckily, Coleman agreed to come back with them on that day. 

One of the Gardai tried to book tickets for the flight as they drove to the airport. But then, after they stopped at a Burger King, Coleman ''had a change of heart'' and ''legged it'' across a dual carriageway to safety - with the Gardai shouting at him that he'd left his passport and luggage behind. Garda Sergeant McGrath told the court on 20 January 2025 that Coleman ''said that he would rather kill himself than give evidence''. In cross-examining Sergeant McGrath on the matter back on November 12th, defence counsel Michael Bowman SC said ''word trickled back that Mr. Coleman would be available to us on Wednesday (the 6th)'' but ''events overtook'' matters.  

Coleman was back in Dublin when a car in which he was travelling was stopped on the Naas Road on  January 2nd 2025 - the day before the verdict was returned. He was brought to Tallaght Garda Station but managed an encore of sorts, running out the door and across another busy road (with six Gardai in pursuit) to escape. He was arrested ''by arrangement'' on January 7th and charged with contempt of court.

By the time that Coleman's dramatic Spanish run got a mention in the court and in the media (November 12th), the prospect of his turning up at all had been written off for some unexplained reason. Even if the incident did manage to sneak onto the middle pages of a newspaper on November 6th, not many were going to read it; November 5th was the day that Donald Trump was elected a second time and it was also the day that the Conor MacGregor rape case began in the High Court. That case would beat the much more significant Phelan case for publicity by a factor of hundreds, if not thousands. 

Coleman appeared before Mr. Justice Paul McDermott (a senior counsel) at the Central Criminal Court on January 14th of this year. Prosecution counsel Roisin Lacey SC argued that the issue had to be dealt with by the trial judge. For some reason Judge McDermott agreed, despite saying that the case ''couldn't be more simple''. There would be great hassle and expense for everyone to meet up with Judge Lankford, who was stuck in Cork with a long-running rape trial (is there a shortage of judges in Cork?). 

A short trial was held for Coleman in Cork Central Criminal Court on January 20th, after which he got six months with two suspended. The trial got much less media attention than it might have got, due to the location and due, again, to Mr. Trump (it was his inauguration day). Garda Detective Sergeant John or Michael McGrath told the court that what are described as ''other officers and members of Spain's police force'' were mysteriously present when he met Coleman in Marbella. Judge Lankford said that what happened in Spain was not relevant. Which raises the obvious question of why Garda McGrath was asked to give evidence.

Apart from entering a guilty plea, Coleman does not appear to have spoken at the trial. A letter apparently written by him was read out in court; in it he apologised to the judge and said he was suffering from PTSD. He explained, ''I ran because I was acting in fear. I did not want to relive the moment again. My mind convinced me the only right way to fix my problems was to run.''. His counsel Tim O'Leary SC made a more extreme point, saying that Coleman ''was in fear of his life'', but he also emphasised anxiety and PTSD without clinical assessment. No psychological report was done on the accused and there was no comprehensive detailing of his actions. It was oddly reminiscent of Phelan's own defence - long on feelings, short on supporting evidence. 

It is strange that a defendant can claim to have been acting in fear and not be asked about the source of that fear. Coleman had every reason to be scared of Phelan, a man who not only shot his friend and his dog dead but had also probably shot not too far from his own head. But he was not scared of Phelan, not handicapped by PTSD and not alienated from the courts system. He used a barrister to appeal a July 2023 conviction for dangerous driving (he got five months, three suspended). And he approached (or was approached by) city centre solicitors around 12 months before Phelan's trial began and ended up filing a High Court personal injury lawsuit (E60k minimum) against Phelan on 30 November 2023. 

                                                                      QUESTIONS

All of this raises many questions the courts and media have yet to ask: Why did Coleman not choose to run to Britain, where he could easily vanish and would have had better prospects of employment? What took him to Marbella, one of the most expensive resorts in Spain? On whose information did the Gardai find the hotel and why was it never named in court? Could the Marbella connection possibly have had anything to do with Coleman's friendship with Kinahan gang member Lee Gibson? And if so, would that explain the presence of those ''other officers and members of Spain's police force''? 

Had he planned to stay in Spain indefinitely or did he have reason to believe the court would not wait for his evidence? Why did the Gardai stop for refreshments when they had just left a hotel and were only driving 51km to Malaga Airport? Why escape at all when he certainly knew he was not obliged to go with the Gardai and probably knew he could not be extradited? Why get out at a service station and leave his passport and luggage behind him when he could have walked away in Malaga and carried his belongings to another hotel? Why the drama? 

Did the Gardai track him down a second time and attempt to change his mind? If yes, how and where did they find him? If no, how was he able to travel back to Ireland without the guards' knowledge but with his passport? Why was the date of his return to Ireland not established in evidence? It being certain that the Gardai took Coleman's phone number on the day of the shootings, did they maintain any contact with him, especially in organising his ''by arrangement'' arrest? Why did it take until Tuesday 12th before Garda Sergeant McGrath appeared in court? Why was the court so casual in accepting the disappearance of the key witness in a murder/manslaughter trial when the accused had so much to gain from his absence? Does doing so not set a dangerous precedent for any witnesses in murder cases? And why was his counsel's unchallenged pleading that Coleman ''was in fear of his life'' not considered in his sentencing for contempt?

                                            

                                                  A LITTLE HELP FROM ABOVE

In addition to Coleman's absence, Phelan's cause in the main trial was helped to an extraordinary extent by two recent Supreme Court judgments, both of them written by Ms. Justice Aileen Donnelly (a senior counsel). The first - Sean Lane v the DPP - was delivered on 11 July 2024, the second - Mark Crawford v the DPP - on 14 October 2024, just two days before the Phelan trial began (''extensively referred to'' during the trial, it raises the question of how different the verdict might have been had the trial not been adjourned in May). Both Lane and Crawford got short shrift in their respective judgments, to the extent that it is difficult to understand why their appeals were admitted in the first place. 

The Crawford case has been described by Casemine as a ''landmark'' one. It places huge emphasis on what the accused's ''honest belief'' might have been at the time of a killing. Casemine says that ''Jurors are now required to evaluate self-defence claims based on both the accused's perception and an objective standard of reasonableness''. As the judgment puts it, ''... not only must the force be reasonable in the mind of the accused at the that time, but it must be the force that reasonable members of the community who find themselves in those circumstances would use.'' And ''even if (the accused's) belief was unjustified the important issue here is whether he honestly had that belief''. It is difficult to read the judgment's sample charge in paragraph's 140 and 141 without thinking of Phelan rather than Crawford; it even mentions ''his opportunity to retreat'' (Phelan claimed that he retreated up a bank but couldn't go backwards). 

Setting the bar for reasonable force in self-defence a little on the low side, Judge Donnelly points out that a person who might ''take out a baseball bat and hit (a) child repeatedly over the head'' in response to the child ''repeatedly hitting them with some sort of soft toy'' ''is not entitled to a complete acquittal'' if pleading the use of reasonable force. I wouldn't advise dropping the kids off at Auntie Aileen's if she's working on something and you're hoping to get out for a chance to see The Naked Gun.

The Lane judgment raised the issue of routes to verdict. These are written directions which are supplied to jurors. They commonly consist of ''a series of questions that lead the jury to the appropriate verdict''. Despite the judge acknowledging at her paragraph 76 that ''The issue of route to verdict did not arise in the present appeal'', she still gave permission for judges to supply these documents to juries in paragraph 84 q) of the judgment. Her segue into recommending the use of RTVs starting in paragraph 66 seems contrived, emphasising her concern that juries might not be able to understand a vital verbal explanation.

First used only as recently as 2001 (there is some dispute about this, with claims they were used in the Nineties) routes to verdict have been used in England, Wales, New Zealand, Canada and Australia. In my opinion they represent a sinister attempt - spearheaded by Sir Brian Leveson (QC) and Professor Cheryl Thomas KC - to undermine the democratisation of justice, going back to the Magna Carta but best expressed in the American constitution. Ireland became the first republic to join the anti-jury route to verdict movement. It was a momentous decision which was made without public debate and without even making the news. Judge Donnelly's judgment should be re-evaluated as a discussion document before it does any more harm.

As far as I know, the Conor McGregor sleazefest became the first case in Ireland to get the route to verdict treatment. Among many peculiarities in the handling and in the result (the paucity of the payment to the plaintiff in comparison to what her lawyers got) of that case was the question in the RTV, ''Did Conor McGregor assault Nikita Hand?'' which, when answered by the jury in the affirmative, led to McGregor's non-criminal conviction for the much less vague charge of sexual assault. 

The route to verdict in Phelan's case (can it be revealed to the public?) was handed over following Judge Lankford's five day reading of the charge. The document ''appeared modelled on the sample charge in Crawford'', according to Mary Carolan in the above Irish Times article; ''Counsel for both sides had prepared draft RTVs but the judge decided the content of the final document''.

                                                                     SCRAMBLES

Despite ten weeks of running, some of the most fundamental details managed to elude all the professionals whose job it was to leave no stone unturned. Worthy of examination was the simple question of what happened to Phelan's Winchester shotgun after the dog was shot? In a (generic) report on Godreu's testimony, it is written that ''He said the accused had placed the rifle in a car.'' It is not clear what this means. It implies rather than says that the rifle was put away post-shooting, but, at least going by what was reported, none of the other witnesses, including Phelan, said so or mentioned a car. It is difficult to see how such a calm disposing of the weapon could have fitted in to the frenetic events as described by just about everyone who was present. This raises the possibility that the weapon stayed in its most logical place - strapped to Phelan's shoulder. It would change the picture quite a bit if it turned out that Coleman and Greene had reason to be fearful of a visible weapon rather than being surprised by a concealed one.

A similar health warning applies to Phelan's claim to have been unable to retreat any further up the bank he was ''scrambling up'' and that he therefore had to come towards Coleman and Conlon - saying ''I went forward to them to get them back''. The 'coming towards' (oddly unmentioned by the other witnesses) could have been used by the prosecution as evidence of attack, but they chose not to do that. As far as I can see, none of the witnesses was ever asked why he couldn't retreat - if there was a fence or bushes there, if it got too steep for him to handle, if he was scrambling at all. A visit to the site by the jury would have helped and the prosecution applied for that, but Judge Lankford refused it, on grounds that ''We are entering our eighth week and if something were to go wrong it would be lamentable at this stage of the case.'' It is obvious to assume that at least a photograph and surely many photographs of the crime scene were provided to the jury, but I could find no mention of this happening in any report (maps were reported as having being provided). Photos of the inside of his house and other things, yes, but nothing of the crime scene. Is this possible?

Phelan's ''possibly bird-shot'' claims are a little different, as it is doubtful that anyone could prove that there were only bullets in the revolver if he did habitually use bird-shot (itself a detail which was never established).

                                                THIS IS NOT THE END OF IT                  

The simplicity of the case is something which seems to have escaped the attention of those who ran it. There were eight people present. Four of them were working. Three of them were caught somewhere between being at play and being up to no good. And one of them was somewhere between giving orders, chipping in and being very much on edge. He was armed and doubly armed, when no one else was armed. He was the eldest person present, old enough to have sense, especially when carrying lethal weapons. It was his choice to carry them and his choice to use them. No one else hurt anyone. An unarmed man was shot in the back of the head while trying to get away from an armed man.

The seven eye witnesses to the killing did not add to this in any significant way. Neither did they take from it. If, as is usually the case, the only witnesses to the killing were the killer and the killed, then the Gardai and the courts would have been dealing with one unarmed man, dead, and one unharmed man, alive and with two warm guns. What use then, the unharmed man's pleading that he thought he was about to be ''beaten to a pulp'' (Phelan's words)?

The defence case was that Phelan had fired three warning shots and if the jury didn't buy that, then its case was that Phelan's actions were ''a legitimate use of force in self-defence'' where he was in fear for his life. 

No warning shots were fired. A warning shot from a pistol involves the weapon being brought back towards the shoulder and safely discharged, albeit with uncertainty about where the bullet will land. The universal response to a warning shot is to freeze. This did not happen. From the first shot, Coleman and Greene turned and ran because the bullet was close enough to make them fear for their lives. What emotion or intent they saw in Phelan's eyes no one else can say, because one man has yet to give evidence and the other can never do so. Every witness stated that the shots went 'in(to) the air' (Roudaut first said ''towards the sky'', then said ''It's really confusing, I don't have a lot of memory of the direction of the shots'' and ''towards the man but in the air''). 

The pedantic but legitimate point is that every shot goes into the air until it hits something. The angle of the shots was everything. Phelan described ''the arc over their heads'' and his counsel teased out the possibility of a shot ending up a matter of inches lower than where it was intended to go. Most likely, the first was to the left and probably not far above Coleman's head, the second a little higher and between them, and the third to the right and into Greene's head. Shooting near to someone's head is an assault, regardless of its not connecting. And any unlawful act which cannot be excused as self-defence, such as assault, that causes death automatically becomes an unlawful act manslaughter. 

The only evidence to support the notion that Phelan had a right to be fearful of being attacked was his own panicky 999 call. Whether that panic was feigned or genuine, driven by the knowledge that he was in big trouble with the law after shooting the dog, driven by a physical cowardice or by something else is hard to say. ''They were coming to fulfil the threats they had made'' was a clever line, which could mean anything a clever counsel could persuade a jury it meant. But there was not one iota of physical or verbal evidence to support the notion that threats of violence had been made. Not only were the two men unarmed, they chose not to pick anything off the ground or elsewhere which could have been used as a weapon. Greene's words were not those of someone intent on violence: ''This is not the end of it, mate''. Nor were the words of whichever man said, ''We're going to get you charged for that''. 

Phelan's personal space was invaded, or at least he was unsettled from outside that space. Without Coleman's testimony, we can only guess at why that happened. My theory is as follows:  the two men were indeed coming to fulfil a threat they had made and the threat was what Phelan mentioned as ''something about a claim''. They sensed weakness and smelt money, and wanted to provoke a reaction they could profit from. This is consistent with Greene's saying he would call the guards but holding back from doing so. It is also consistent with Phelan's evidence that ''Someone said it was not my land, which I said it was'' - confirming the target was the right one. No one should underestimate the toxic hold of pro bono compensation cases in modern Irish culture, something I've witnessed make people act in an undignified way more than once. The tragic irony of Greene's death is that it probably would never have happened if he and Coleman hadn't mistaken Phelan for a farmer, someone they knew the lawyers would be happy to go after. It was the youngest man, Duggan, who stayed put because he hadn't yet learned that part of the game - and I hope he never does.

If I am wrong about this and the two men were about to turn violent, well how bad could it have got? Greene was only a little fella and Coleman isn't the biggest. And Phelan wasn't alone; there were two men and two women present who would surely have helped him to defend himself. And nothing Coleman and Greene did suggests that they were fools, who would incriminate themselves in front of four witnesses. 

A very simple and key point, never made in court, was that as soon as someone put a hand on Phelan in an aggressive way, then he would have had an excuse to pull out the Smith and Wesson. He was the one with the hidden gun, he always held ultimate control over what happened. 

                                                            STRESS TEST

Since being at school with a boy, neighbour to a young man and cousin to another young man who each took their own lives with their fathers' shotguns, I've never had any time for guns. I was also told that a shotgun stolen from my home (before I owned it) was used to murder Darren Carey and Patrick Murray in Kildare in 1999. But any farmers I've known who use shotguns are very safety conscious and always open the gun when not actively hunting. Shooting a tied up dog would be unthinkable to them, carrying a concealed lethal weapon even more so. Any farmer who behaved like that would (rightly) be torn to shreds by the barristers in court. 

The Wexford assault charge against Phelan was struck out a month ago, on the basis of Garda tardiness leading Phelan to discard evidence which might have proved he was acting in self-defence (huh?). And since he won the big one, Phelan is now applying for taxpayers to pay (we already paid for the prosecution) what are called ''enormous'' legal costs, which apparently includes paying for two senior counsel and one junior counsel more than an ordinary person would have had, maybe even for his American expert witnesses. Which is where we begin to understand why so many barristers were involved and why the case ambled along for ten weeks. 

What the barristers don't seem to understand is that the integrity of our justice system can only ever be fully stress-tested when one of their own is thought to have committed a crime. That is when the adults enter the room, professionals who stand for something.

                                                    IS THIS THE END OF IT?

In the end, the jury read the route to verdict and made its choice between a perfunctory argument for murder, no argument at all for unlawful and dangerous act manslaughter (the judge did not allow for a verdict of gross negligence manslaughter) and the feel good collection of arguments for not guilty. And they chose the verdict which would make all the nice, cultured people happy. 

Both of the relevant types of manslaughter come under the category of involuntary manslaughter. As an example in the category, an American source gives the example of a ''Reckless discharge of a firearm into the air or into a crowd, causing death''. Absent of Coleman's evidence, murder was probably not a justifiable verdict (though Phelan's telling Gardai that ''There was no other option or I would have gone down'' suggests intent to harm) but involuntary manslaughter (of whichever subcategory and maybe both) was. Going back to March 25th 2022 and Ms. Justice Deirdre Murphy's turning down of Phelan's bail application, Judge Murphy (an adult now sadly retired) marked the card of any judge who might follow her. As this report puts it, ''The evidence of criminal conduct in this case, the judge said, was extremely strong'' and ''A verdict of gross negligence manslaughter at a minimum was open to the accused''.

The good news is that there are grounds for an appeal in circumstances where, according to Tom O'Malley SC, ''the judge acted wrongly or unlawfully in excluding certain key evidence that should have been admitted''. I'm not sure if it qualifies under those terms, but Judge Lankford's refusal to allow the jury the option of making a verdict of gross negligence manslaughter is inexcusable, especially in light of another judge specifically referring to it. But I have no faith that anyone at this stage wants justice for Keith Greene.

                                                                       *****

I can remember a time when a guy who hurt someone's dog could expect to get a few slaps in return, and would not go running to guards or lawyers about it. Had that happened in Phelan's case, then things might have worked out. Everyone would have learned a lesson; nobody would have died and no taxpayer money would have been wasted. That is how it used to be. It wasn't always fair, but it was peer-regulated and negotiable.

And maybe the trial could have been shortened if the barristers held off with the doggy snuff videos and instead showed the jury footage of British signal corps soldiers David Howes and Derek Wood being attacked by a crazed mob in Belfast in 1988. Maybe say a prayer for the dead men. Then everyone might understand what it really means to be armed and under attack from unarmed people. To be ''scared shitless'', in the words of one senior counsel (Phelan), but to only fire a single warning shot and ''take the beating coming'', in the words of another senior counsel (Guerin).