Jury in double murder trial of Ruth Lawrence given option of returning majority verdict

Alison O'Riordan

The jury in the trial of Ruth Lawrence, who stands accused of shooting a drug dealer and working "as a unit" with her boyfriend to murder him and another man, has been given the option of returning a majority verdict.

The panel of four men and eight women began considering their verdict on Thursday afternoon and has spent a total of eight hours and 21 minutes over three days deliberating in their jury room in the Criminal Courts of Justice building.

The five-week trial has heard that Ms Lawrence was extradited from South Africa to face trial in 2023, nearly a decade after the bodies of Anthony Keegan (33) and Eoin O'Connor (32) were found on a lake island in the midlands.

Ms Lawrence (46), who is originally from Clontarf in Dublin but with an address at Patricks Cottage, Ross, Mountnugent in Co Meath has pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Keegan and Mr O'Connor at an unknown location within the State on a date between April 22nd, 2014 and May 26th, 2014, both dates inclusive.

At 2.24pm today the panel handed up a note to Mr Justice Tony Hunt asking how they should proceed if they were not "unanimous on a verdict" and when they could "use" the alternative verdict of "guilty of assisting an offender".

The judge said he was able to provide them with further guidance given they had been deliberating for six hours and 50 minutes at that stage. He said it was appropriate for them to move on to the next stage and he could accept a majority verdict on one or both counts, provided at least ten of them agreed.

There are three verdicts the jury can return in relation to each of the two murder charges against Ms Lawrence, namely; guilty of murder, not guilty of murder but guilty of assisting an offender or not guilty.

In his charge, the judge said the panel could return alternative verdicts of assisting an offender if they found the prosecution had not made out their case beyond a reasonable doubt that Ms Lawrence was part of a joint enterprise to murder the two men.

Addressing the jury this afternoon as to when they could use the alternative verdict of "guilty of assisting an offender", the judge said this was a "fall back" as they were initially asked to deliberate on murder verdicts on a separate basis. He said the alternative verdict only arose if they were satisfied Ms Lawrence was not guilty on the murder charges. "It can't be used as a substitute or a broker verdict," he added.

The judge said the verdict of "not guilty simpliciter" was open to them but "on the run of the case that's a theoretical consideration".

He told the jury that anything lower than a 10-2 majority was not a verdict and if it could not be moved by further discussion then to come back and tell him.

The jury asked to go home for the evening at 4pm, which Mr Justice Hunt said they were fully entitled to do. He said he assumed they had not reached a verdict on which at least ten of them agreed and asked them to return to the Central Criminal Court tomorrow morning.

The trial has heard that two protected witnesses - father and daughter Jason and Stacey Symes - came forward to An Garda Siochana in 2014 and gave voluntary statements about the alleged involvement of Ms Lawrence and her boyfriend, South African national Neville van der Westhuizen, in the murders of the two men.

Stacey Symes gave evidence to the trial that Ms Lawrence told her that she had shot Mr O'Connor "but it went wrong", so her boyfriend Neville "took over". The witness also said that she and her father were asked to help move the bodies of the two men.

Michael O'Higgins SC with Jane Horgan-Jones BL, prosecuting, told the jury in his closing address that Ms Lawrence and her boyfriend had acted as "a unit and a tag team" to "lure" drug dealer Eoin O'Connor to their home to murder him in a "highly calculated" crime.

The State contends that Mr van der Westhuizen also shot Mr Keegan while "acting as a team" with Ms Lawrence, making both guilty of murder.

Whereas in his closing speech Patrick Gageby SC alongside Sarah Connolly BL, for the defence, said father and daughter Jason and Stacey Symes - the two key witnesses in the case - painted themselves as "innocents abroad" and had downplayed their own roles. He said they could not be trusted to convict Ms Lawrence of murdering the two men, telling the jury that: "they played the system and they tried to play you"

In his opening address, Mr O'Higgins said the evidence will be that Mr O'Connor sold drugs to Neville van der Westhuizen, who owed the deceased man in the region of €70,000.