Jim Mansfield Jnr jailed over attempt to destroy CCTV evidence

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

Jim Mansfield Jnr was sentenced at the Special Criminal Court on 7 February 2022 to two years in prison, with the final six months suspended for six months. The sentence was backdated to 17 January 2022, when he was taken into custody.

He had pleaded not guilty to conspiring with one or more people to falsely imprison Martin Byrne between 1 January and 30 June 2015. He also denied attempting to pervert the course of justice by directing Patrick Byrne to destroy CCTV footage relating to Martin Byrne’s false imprisonment between 9 and 12 June 2015.

On 17 January 2022, the three-judge court acquitted Mansfield of the conspiracy charge and found him guilty of attempting to pervert the course of justice. The proceedings were reported on 17 January 2022.

The court found that Mansfield had directed Patrick Byrne, Martin Byrne’s brother, to destroy footage showing Mansfield and Martin Byrne leaving Finnstown House Hotel on 9 June 2015, the morning Martin Byrne was kidnapped. The footage was not destroyed: Patrick Byrne kept the hard drive and downloaded it onto a memory stick.

Giving judgment, Mr Justice Alexander Owens said the most likely scenario was that Mansfield had lured Martin Byrne to a meeting to facilitate his kidnap. But the court could not reasonably exclude the possibilities that Dessie O’Hare had misled Mansfield about the meeting or that Mansfield was unaware of the kidnap plot. The evidence was insufficient to establish that he was party to it.

At sentencing, defence counsel Bernard Condon SC said there had been no threats or intimidation and the footage had not been destroyed. The judge took account of mitigation including Mansfield’s lack of a criminal record, poor education, good character and care for his mother.