PROSECUTING AUTHORITIES should have considered bringing perjury charges against police officers over the plastic bullet killing of an innocent mother of three, senior judges ruled in Belfast yesterday.
But they still dismissed a legal challenge brought by the husband of victim Nora McCabe – partly because of a “virtually unprecedented delay” of nearly 25 years in bringing the case.
The High Court panel also refused to issue an order quashing the decision not to charge either the sergeant who fired the fatal round or his commanding chief superintendent with either murder or manslaughter. Both men have since died.
Mrs McCabe, 33, was killed in July 1981 during disturbances as she returned from the shops to her home in Linden Street, west Belfast.
It fractured her skull and led to her death in hospital the following day.
After studying police investigation files and statements, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions concluded months later that the evidence was insufficient to warrant criminal proceedings against any of the officers travelling in the police Landrover and directed no prosecutions.
At an inquest in 1982 RUC witnesses claimed the road was strewn with beer barrels and concrete blocks. They said they were coming under heavy attack with petrol bombs and stones.
But as part of judicial review proceedings brought by Mrs McCabe’s husband Jim, film footage taken by Canadian cameramen at the scene was produced in a bid to “demolish” the credibility of the police account.
Mr McCabe’s lawyers alleged officers had closed ranks and lied under oath to protect two colleagues from facing murder charges.
Ruling on the case, Lord Justice Coghlin concluded that, based on all the evidence available in 1983, the decision not to prosecute was one that was open to the Director of Public Prosecutions and could not be condemned as irrational.
Dealing with the second part of the case, the judge held there was nothing in the papers to suggest consideration had been given to charging police officers with perjury or perverting the course of justice.
He said it was not in doubt that a number of DPP/PPS officers were aware of significant factual conflicts between the evidence of a number of police officers and the events depicted on the video film.
Having reviewed the documents in the context of the film and the submissions of counsel consideration ought to have been given to the offence of perjury, Lord Justice Coghlin found.
Lord Justice Coghlin expressed sympathy for Mr McCabe’s “sense of powerlessness and frustration that no one has been made amenable for his wife’s death”.
Mr McCabe said “I’m deeply, deeply disappointed that they didn’t find or officially state that Nora was in fact murdered by a member of the RUC.”