Crowds grow as trial moves towards conclusion

Onlookers craned to study the defendant as counsel listed the facial injuries suffered by Celine Cawley – 18 in all

AS THE trial winds down, the throng in Court 19 expands, getting sweatier and more ill-tempered by the day. “People were clinging to the doors,” said a breathless observer. A new element of the customary fraught exchanges was an urgent injunction to “mind the dog”. A respectful space was created for the large, black guide dog lying contentedly amid the crush, getting patted and praised by all-comers, including prosecuting counsel, Mary Ellen Ring.

Happily for him, he remained oblivious to the risk of having his tailed docked by a sharp heel. With the so-called “overflow room” out of action – it accommodates jury panels on Mondays – there was no relief. One estimate put the head count at about 250, a substantial leap on the official capacity of 170, itself an unlikely figure given the minimal public seating in the court. Most had been queuing since long before 10am, poised to crash through the door for a trial scheduled to start at 11.30.

Since they were there to see Eamonn Lillis, the other human tragedy developing before them – a Slovakian man being sentenced for manslaughter, with his interpreter quietly revealing his fate in his left ear – was an unwelcome distraction.

Mr Lillis, whose sisters, Elaine and Carol, were in court as always, finally took the stand at 12.17pm. In the tense silence, onlookers craned forward to study him as Mary Ellen Ring listed, one by one, the facial injuries suffered by Celine Cawley – 18 in all – and asked him to explain them. He remained composed, his answers repetitive and inconclusive. “I’m not sure how that happened”, was a recurring response. His tone became more dogged as the cross-examination continued.

He challenged the Deputy State Pathologist’s assessment of Ms Cawley’s height, relative to marks on a wall. “Dr Curtis said she was 5’ 10”, repeated Ms Ring. Looking straight at her, he retorted: “I was married to her and she was 5’ 8”.” Ms Ring moved on.

His words became less audible, faster and more garbled as he set about explaining the note found on his bedroom desk, the one that began: “She will get that wedding dress . . .” and ended with: “You are running out of time!!!”

It was nothing to do with himself, he said, just something he was working on. “I’d been writing an account of a film crew which was filming a robbery . . . ” The crew had been doing a shoot at Irish Permanent, he recounted, when someone approached them who thought it was a crime scene reconstruction and that gave him an idea that it would be fun if a film crew pulled off the robbery.

As for the note, he said he woke up at about 4am on November 2008 and thought it would make a simple idea for a script and wrote it down. The “you” and the “she” who were “running out of time”, he said, were two characters in the script. “Are you sure you weren’t feeling trapped”, asked Ms Ring. “I had no reason to feel trapped,” he answered. It was over in under 40 minutes and so was the case for the defence.