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17/10/2007
Smuggling Case Makes Legal History
Legal history is to be made with a landmark ruling that a retrial should be heard by a judge sitting alone.
The move follows an attempt to bribe a juror in a cigarette smuggling case where three brothers and a senior customs official each deny evading duty on six million cigarettes seized near Coalisland in County Tyrone in 2003.
The defendants had gone to the Appeal Court to try to get the ruling overturned
However, the judge there said there was a "real and present danger" that jury tampering would take place.
The Court of Appeal in Belfast heard that a juror reported that two partly-masked men had come to his home and offered him money for information about the case
He refused to have any dealings with them but reported that he had experienced considerable fear as a result of the approach, Lord Chief Justice Sir Brian Kerr said.
"The determined nature of the approach to the juror, the blatant attempt at bribery and the fact that those involved were prepared to go to the juror's home are deeply ominous of future interference with any jury empanelled to hear this case," Sir Brian said.
Sir Brian and lord justices Campbell and Girvan rejected a defence argument that the retrial could proceed with a jury so long as members were given constant police protection.
The lord chief justice said this "would lead to an incurable compromise of the jury's objectivity".
(BMcC)
The move follows an attempt to bribe a juror in a cigarette smuggling case where three brothers and a senior customs official each deny evading duty on six million cigarettes seized near Coalisland in County Tyrone in 2003.
The defendants had gone to the Appeal Court to try to get the ruling overturned
However, the judge there said there was a "real and present danger" that jury tampering would take place.
The Court of Appeal in Belfast heard that a juror reported that two partly-masked men had come to his home and offered him money for information about the case
He refused to have any dealings with them but reported that he had experienced considerable fear as a result of the approach, Lord Chief Justice Sir Brian Kerr said.
"The determined nature of the approach to the juror, the blatant attempt at bribery and the fact that those involved were prepared to go to the juror's home are deeply ominous of future interference with any jury empanelled to hear this case," Sir Brian said.
Sir Brian and lord justices Campbell and Girvan rejected a defence argument that the retrial could proceed with a jury so long as members were given constant police protection.
The lord chief justice said this "would lead to an incurable compromise of the jury's objectivity".
(BMcC)
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