The jury in the trial of the man charged with murdering rugby player Shane Geoghegan in Limerick has been sent home for the evening.
They will resume their deliberations at the Central Criminal Court tomorrow morning.
Barry Doyle (25) with addresses at Portland Row, Dublin; and Hyde Road, Limerick, has pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Geoghegan near his home in Clonmore, Kilteragh, Dooradoyle, Limerick on November 9th, 2008.
Mr Geoghegan (28) was shot dead in a suspected case of mistaken identity.
Mr Justice Paul Carney earlier encouraged the jury to reach a unanimous decision but said a 10-1 majority would acceptable. They spent eight hours deliberating a verdict today.
On Friday, the jury of six men and five women deliberated for a further two hours and 35 minutes before being sent home for the weekend. The 12th juror was excused when his father became critically ill.
During Friday’s sitting, Seán Guerin SC, prosecuting, told the court that Mr Geoghegan had been on his way home that night, "perfectly inoffensively and entirely innocently", when he had been gunned down unjustly.
“There’s no question that it was murder,” he said in his closing speech. “The question is: Was Barry Doyle the person who committed the murder?”
He noted that Mr Geoghegan would have been walking home in the direction Mr Doyle said he was, and that ballistics evidence tallied with where the accused said he was standing when he fired the shots.
Defence barrister Martin O’Rourke asked the jury what Barry Doyle had told the gardaí that they hadn’t already told him, referring to evidence they had put to him in three days of interviews before the admissions.
He said it was the defence’s case that there was psychological pressure, coercion and inducement and that his client was the victim of threats and promises.
He said that the defendant’s solicitor had done a deal with the gardaí that if he admitted to the murder, the mother of his sick child, Victoria Gunnery, would be released from custody.
Mr Justice Paul Carney told the 11 jurors to have due regard to the fact that there was no corroboration with the interviews.
However, he told them that if they all agreed beyond a reasonable doubt that Barry Doyle was guilty, then they could convict him.