Peter Butterly murder trial collapses, retrial ordered

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

A retrial of Dean Evans, Edward McGrath and Sharif Kelly was ordered at the Special Criminal Court on 23 January 2015 after their Peter Butterly murder trial collapsed over a disclosure failure. Presiding judge Ms Justice Deirdre Murphy said the non-jury court had decided to discharge itself as a jury. The proceedings were reported on 23 January 2015.

The men had pleaded not guilty to his murder. Dean Evans and Edward McGrath had also pleaded not guilty to firearm offences on that occasion. Peter Butterly was shot dead around 2pm on 6 March 2013 in the Huntsman Inn car park at Gormanston, Co Meath.

The decision followed disclosure of previously privileged material from David Cullen’s July 2013 statement to gardaí. Allegedly involved in the murder plan himself, Cullen became a State witness against his former co-accused and implicated the men in testimony. The report said he had been dealt with for lesser offences and was serving a three-and-half-year prison sentence.

The court heard that the hidden passage recorded Cullen saying he had kept his distance from Edward McGrath and disliked him. It emerged after McGrath’s barrister, Bernard Condon SC, received an unredacted version in another case. Condon argued that the passage could matter to the case because it suggested a motive for Cullen to lie. He said his cross-examination rights had been breached and the disclosure process could no longer be trusted.

Counsel for each accused sought acquittals, alternatively asking for Cullen’s evidence to be excluded or a retrial. Ms Justice Deirdre Murphy questioned how the court could rule out further disclosure failures when this omission remained unexplained.