A jury has been discharged after failing to agree a verdict in the trial of a 37-year-old Derry man charged with murdering his former partner.
Stephen Cahoon, known to his friends as Stephen Moore, admitted strangling mother-of-four Jean Teresa Quigley, who was ten weeks pregnant with his son at the time.
Mr Cahoon of Harvey Street, Derry, had pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin to murdering the 30-year-old at her home at Cornshell Fields, Shantallow, Derry on July 26th, 2008.
The seven women and five men of the jury had been given the option of reaching a majority verdict of either murder or manslaughter following the two-and-a-half-week trial.
However, after almost eight hours deliberating, they told Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy they could not reach an agreement.
The judge told them to write ‘disagree’ on the issue paper and discharged them from jury service for 10 years.
The case was then but back into the court list.
The case made legal history. Mr Cahoon was charged under the Criminal Law Jurisdiction Act of 1976, and was given the option of being tried in Dublin or in Northern Ireland. He opted for Dublin, and became the first person to be tried before a jury for an offence under the legislation.
The 1976 Act was brought in to allow for trials in the Republic for offences committed outside the jurisdiction in Northern Ireland or Great Britain. It has rarely been used and up until now the only cases have been brought before the three-judge, non-jury Special Criminal Court, which deals with terrorist offences. Last year a Belfast man was convicted of murder at the Special Criminal Court under the 1976 Act.