The Court of Criminal Appeal quashed two of Patrick “Rubber Og” O’Reilly’s four convictions arising from a disturbance at a halting site in Mahon, Cork, and ordered a retrial on those counts. It upheld his convictions for possessing a firearm and ammunition without certificates.
In a judgment delivered by Mr Justice McCracken on 30 July 2004, the court granted leave to appeal. It affirmed convictions under the Firearms Act 1925 for possessing a firearm and ammunition without certificates, but quashed convictions for possessing a firearm for an unlawful purpose and violent disorder. The court ordered a retrial on the latter two counts.
The convictions followed a disturbance on the morning of 9 September 2000 involving members of O’Reilly’s extended family and members of the McCarthy family. The judgment said the groups had a longstanding dispute, and described the incident as beginning when several carloads of McCarthy family members arrived at an unofficial halting site in Mahon carrying weapons. Gardaí who arrived saw O’Reilly holding a sawn-off shotgun.
At trial, O’Reilly said he had taken the gun from a McCarthy family member and used it to defend himself. The judgment noted video evidence that he had obtained it from the back of a car. Two other charges relating to discharging a firearm had been withdrawn from the jury, and the jury found him not guilty of two charges alleging threats against gardaí.
The appeal court rejected challenges to the convictions for possession without certificates. It said possession was established for the purposes of the 1925 Act, and concluded that the Act’s definition of ammunition covered spent cartridges and cartridge shells.
The court found a defect in the trial judge’s directions on self-defence, which was relevant to the unlawful-purpose and violent-disorder counts. Under the 1997 Act provisions considered in the judgment, the central question was whether O’Reilly honestly held the belief that he needed to use force; the jury could consider whether there were reasonable grounds for that belief, but that was not decisive. The appeal court said the judge had instead described self-defence in terms of proportionate force and had not made the statutory test clear.
The prosecution argued that the appeal should not succeed because no specific request had been made to correct the directions. The court held that the absence of such a request should not prejudice O’Reilly where self-defence was central and the jury might have been misdirected. It did not decide whether he acted in self-defence; it quashed the two convictions and directed that they be retried.