Special Criminal Court to give judgment on murder charge against Gerard Hutch

The Special Criminal Court will deliver its judgment on Monday on the trial of Gerard Hutch for the murder of David Byrne at Dublin’s Regency Hotel.

The three-judge, non-jury court had deferred judgment on January 26th last when the proceedings ended after 52 days.

Armed gardaí maintained a presence inside and outside the Criminal Courts of Justice for the duration of the trial and will be back at the complex today when Ms Justice Tara Burns, Judge Sarah Berkeley and Judge Gráinne Malone give their decision.

Mr Hutch (60), with a last address at the Paddocks, Clontarf, has denied the murder of David Byrne, a member of the Kinahan crime gang, during a boxing weigh-in at the hotel on February 5th, 2016.

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Two co-accused, Paul Murphy (61), of Cherry Avenue, Swords, Co Dublin, and Jason Bonney (50), Drumnigh Woods, Portmarnock, Dublin 13, denied lesser charges of facilitating the murder by making vehicles available to a criminal organisation.

Jonathan Dowdall, the main prosecution witness, was previously charged with the murder of 33-year-old Mr Byrne, who suffered catastrophic injuries after he was shot during the attack in the hotel.

The murder charge against Dowdall was dropped last October following his plea in September to a lesser charge of facilitating the murder by the booking of a room in the hotel the previous evening.

The prosecution contended that room was used by a now deceased dissident republican, Kevin ‘Flatcap’ Murray, who, it was alleged, was among the attackers.

Dowdall testified that his father Patrick had been asked by Patsy Hutch to book the room for a “friend”.

He and his father were jailed for four and two years respectively on the facilitation charge.

Days after their sentencing, the trial of Mr Hutch and his co-accused opened on October 18th.

The court was crowded, with the parents of David Byrne, and other Byrne family members, among the attendance.

During prolonged cross-examination of Dowdall, Brendan Grehan SC, for Mr Hutch, put to him there were “two big lies” at the heart of his evidence.

The first was that Gerard Hutch had collected key cards for a room in the hotel from Dowdall and his father on Dublin’s Richmond Road on February 4th, 2016, the evening before the attack on the hotel, counsel said.

The second was that Mr Hutch had “confessed” to Dowdall in a park in Whitehall a few days later, Mr Grehan said.

Dowdall denied he was lying about those matters and denied counsel’s suggestion he was a “master manipulator”. Gerard Hutch was willing to “throw” people, including his own brother, “under a bus”, he said.

Dowdall was previously jailed in 2017 for 12 years for serious offences involving the ‘waterboarding’ of a man at his home in 2015.

During his evidence, Dowdall said he had learned in prison the “real reason” the Hutch/Kinahan feud started was that Gary Hutch and Patrick Hutch had decided to take some €4.5 million linked to the Kinahans and to shoot Daniel Kinahan but that Patrick Hutch jnr, while hiding in bushes, had shot a boxer instead.

At the close of the case, Mr Grehan argued Dowdall was a “liar” and there was no evidence to support the murder charge against Mr Hutch.

Fiona Murphy SC, for the prosecution, said that while Dowdall had been convicted of a “disgusting” separate crime, that did not mean his evidence in this case could not be believed. The prosecution case was that Gerard Hutch was one of two men who had shot David Byrne and the evidence supported a conviction, she said.

The prosecution disputed submissions made by lawyers on behalf of Mr Murphy and Mr Bonney that the evidence did not support the charges against them and they must be acquitted.