An exhibition of art works depicting many high-profile criminal and civil trials, including the civil rape trial of Conor McGregor, has been opened by a senior judge.
Ms Justice Tara Burns said the work of court artist Mike O’Donnell is a “wonderful” visual record capturing proceedings as they happen in the Irish courts, depicting the parties, witnesses, lawyers and judges and “the tension, the anxiety, sheer elation and sheer despair” involved.
No one else – because photographs, TV cameras or recordings are not permitted in courtrooms – is in a position to keep such a record for posterity, she noted.
Now a judge of the Court of Appeal, Ms Justice Burns had presided over many criminal trials which were subject of works by Mr O’Donnell, including the trial at the non-jury Special Criminal Court of Gerry Hutch, who was acquitted in April 2023 of the 2016 murder of Kinahan gang member David Byrne at Dublin’s Regency Hotel.
The judge on Thursday opened the Prima Facie exhibition of about 75 works by Mr O’Donnell over the past year, including a depiction of Mixed Martial Arts fighter Conor McGregor being cross-examined during his civil trial which ended in a High Court jury awarding almost €250,000 damages last November to Nikita Hand who alleged he raped her in the Beacon Hotel in Dublin. Mr McGregor has appealed the jury decision.
Works featuring schoolteacher Enoch Burke, who is involved in protracted proceedings over contempt of court orders to stay away from Wilson’s Hospital School in Co Westmeath after it suspended him for publicly challenging its former principal’s request to address a student using the pronoun “they”, are also exhibited.
Other works depict the continuing trial at the Central Criminal Court of Richard Satchwell (58), originally from Leicester, England, who has denied the murder of his 45-year-old wife Tina at their home at Grattan Street, Youghal, Co Cork, on March 19th and 20th 2017, inclusive.
The exhibition also features scenes from the continuing High Court case by former Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams over his alleged defamation in a 2016 BBC Spotlight programme.
Mr O’Donnell is from Co Kerry and has worked as a court artist in the superior courts here since 2010 and said he takes his work, which is mostly in ink, very seriously.
“I love my ink being a portal into an action-packed courtroom for the public,” he said.
Live court art is not permitted in UK court jurisdictions but is permitted here, reflecting the constitutional requirement that, save for exceptions provided by statute, justice must be administered in public.
Judges and lawyers were among those in attendance when the exhibition was opened on Thursday evening by Ms Justice Burns. It runs until May 15th at the Bar of Ireland’s Distillery Building, Church Street, Dublin.
