THE defence case in the Colin Duffy murder appeal ended yesterday and lawyers for the Crown will today try to convince the three presiding judges that his conviction should stand.
Mr Arthur Harvey QC spent nearly two days in the Appeal Court, Belfast, arguing that the Lurgan man's conviction was unsafe and unsatisfactory because of shortcomings in the evidence.
The main plank in the prosecution case related to the evidence of Lindsay Robb who identified Duffy (28) as the man who shot former UDR sergeant John Lyness in 1993. That crucial evidence disappeared before the appeal began when the Crown decided that Robb was not a credible witness after he was jailed in Scotland for UVF gun running.
In the short time left yesterday to Crown counsel before the court adjourned for the day, it was claimed that secondary identification evidence given by a man known only as Witness B had been properly assessed by the trial judge.
This evidence had been attacked by the defence as frail, inadequate, unreliable and lacking in quality.
But the Crown lawyer argued that in refusing to halt the original trial at the end of the prosecution case the judge had not misdirected himself and had not misunderstood or misapplied well established legal principles.
It now appears that the appeal will run longer than expected and may not finish until tomorrow or Friday.