A jury has returned to the Central Criminal Court on Friday to consider its verdicts for a second day in the trial of Ruth Lawrence, who stands accused of shooting a drug dealer and working “as a unit” with her boyfriend to murder him and another man.
The trial has heard that Ms Lawrence was extradited from South Africa to face trial in 2023, nearly a decade after the bodies of Anthony Keegan (33) and Eoin O’Connor (32) were found on a lake island in the midlands.
Ms Lawrence (46), who is originally from Clontarf in Dublin but with an address at Patricks Cottage, Ross, Mountnugent in Co Meath, has pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Keegan and Mr O’Connor at an unknown location within the State on a date between April 22nd 2014 and May 26th 2014, both dates inclusive.
The jury of four men and eight women began considering their verdicts at 2.38pm on Thursday afternoon and spent a total of one hour and 22 minutes deliberating in their jury room in the Criminal Courts of Justice building.
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The panel re-commenced their deliberation after 11am Friday morning.
Mr Justice Hunt spent two days explaining the law to the panel following the five-week trial at the Central Criminal Court.
The trial has heard that two protected witnesses - father and daughter Jason and Stacey Symes - came forward to An Garda Síochána in 2014 and gave voluntary statements about the alleged involvement of Ms Lawrence and her boyfriend, South African national Neville van der Westhuizen, in the murders of the two men.
Stacey Symes gave evidence to the trial that Ms Lawrence told her that she had shot Mr O’Connor “but it went wrong”, so her boyfriend Neville “took over”. The witness also said that she and her father were asked to help move the bodies of the two men.
Concluding his charge to the panel on Thursday, Mr Justice Hunt said there was plainly evidence that the accused intervened on the part of her boyfriend Neville in the aftermath of the murders. He said there was no ambiguity about this and it supported the alternative verdict of assisting an offender, if the jury was not satisfied with a guilty of murder verdict.
However, Mr Justice Hunt said the prosecution wanted the jury to go further than this. “They say not only is there evidence of Neville’s complicity, it is evidence she was covering up her own complicity as part of the plan.”
The 12 jurors have been told that they can return alternative verdicts of assisting an offender if they find the prosecution has not made out their case beyond a reasonable doubt that Ms Lawrence was part of a joint enterprise to murder the two men.
The judge has said for Ms Lawrence to be guilty of murder on the basis of joint enterprise, the accused must have assisted in a concrete way in the killing of the deceased and there must have been a purpose to deliberately assisting in their deaths.
There are three verdicts the jury can return in relation to each of the two murder charges against Ms Lawrence, namely; guilty of murder, not guilty of murder but guilty of assisting an offender or not guilty.
