On the third day of the new year, Diarmuid Rossa Phelan was acquitted of first-degree murder for the death of Keith Conlon. Upon this verdict being read aloud by the jury, there were gasps, tears, and hugs both in and outside of the courtroom, proof of the shocking, if arguably inevitable, culmination of a three-year-long saga that rocked the lives of many and pierced the heart of Ireland’s criminal justice system.
College responded with no comment when asked by Trinity News about the future of Phelan’s employment at Trinity or if they had been in contact with him since the verdict. It remains unclear whether Phelan will return to teaching in the next academic year.
The verdict: A slow march towards an acquittal.
Presented to the jury was 10 weeks’ worth of evidence, opinion, and persuasion that led them to reject the murder charge and the lesser charge of manslaughter levelled at Phelan by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP). He walked out of Dublin’s Central Criminal Court a free man, albeit with a grey cloud looming over his head and name.
A verdict of not guilty seemed a remote possibility when the prosecution gave its opening remarks in the case back in October; however, as a Trinity law professor and senior council barrister, there is, perhaps, nobody more equipped than he and his team to pull this off.
It is important to note that the focus of a murder trial is not to prove that death occurred due to the actions of another person, but instead to determine beyond a reasonable doubt if the motive of the defendant was aggressive, hateful, premeditated, and so on. In this case, the state argued that Phelan had the intent to kill or seriously injure (which also is grounds for a murder charge) Conlon and was not acting in self-defence for fear of his life.
Phelan has never denied that he shot Keith Conlon. Conlon and two other men were trespassing on Phelan’s farmland in Tallaght, County Dublin, while fox hunting. He never even disputed the course of events that led to him firing three bullets in the air, the last one striking Conlon in the back of the head, a fatal injury resulting in his death two days later.
As the lead barrister for the defence, Seán Guerin SC said in his closing remarks to the jury, what lies at the heart of this case is emotion, namely fear over anger. In brief, the state argued that Phelan’s anger at the moment constituted an intent to kill or seriously injure the deceased — a requisite for murder –- while his defence insisted that he feared for his life, and thus acted in self-defence that day.
22 February 2022: The day of the shooting
In the late morning of February 22, 2022, a day that Phelan was supposed to deliver a lecture in Trinity, a dog’s barking could be heard on Hazelgrove farm. By 1pm, the dog was dead — Phelan shot it with a rifle after investigating the sound with a French farmhand he employed.
While the dog was tightly tied to a tree in a wooded area, Phelan says that he believed it was loose and would thus likely go on to attack his sheep and lambs grazing nearby.
Provoked by the shooting of the dog, three men “exploded” (Phelan’s words from a Garda interview the same day of the shooting) from bushes, with an aggressive argument naturally ensuing. The jury saw a video from Conlon’s phone of this interaction, in which the men were shouting that they would call the police, though Phelan had already rang 999 due to the initial trespassing and increasingly distressing argument.
Keith Conlon was shot in the back of the head by Diarmuid Phelan at approximately a one-metre range just minutes later and was pronounced dead in Tallaght Hospital two days later. Phelan had shot three bullets in the air from a revolver he produced from his coat, and with Conlon walking up an incline towards Phelan, the last one struck him as he was turning away.
A German farmhand quickly rang emergency services and was instructed to put Conlon on the phone, who had collapsed into a sand bunker, and simply said his name and that he had been shot.
Phelan instructed workers who were repairing the front gate and installing CCTV cameras at the entrance of the property to make way for the ambulances and police cars that would soon arrive, and so, set in motion a series of events that would lay the foundations for the trial to come.
The murder trial: organised chaos
In the two-year interim between the death of Conlon and the trial of Phelan, both sides were busy preparing their case, gathering eyewitnesses, expert testimonies, and legal cruxes.
“Two particular witnesses proved to be detrimental to the state’s case against Phelan”
What followed was a somewhat benign trial, as far as murder trials go, with minimal dramatic revelations being made throughout the 10 weeks. There are, however, certain aspects of the trial that would shake up the course of events. Although not necessarily central to the case, these provide insight into the running of the trial, and the eventual verdict.
The first issue that Justice Siobhán Lankford had to address was the jury selection. It was agreed that nobody from or with any connection to the general Tallaght area could sit on this jury. This resulted in the start of the trial being delayed at the last minute, as one young man was removed from the jury despite being accepted and sworn in, as it was discovered that his girlfriend had grown up in Tallaght and still had friends in the area.
With the alleged crime having taken place in Tallaght, it may be understandable why people from the area (who would be more likely to hear rumours of the case) were not allowed to sit on the jury. The question remains, however, why the same standard was not applied to Phelan — with no provision being set as to people on the jury having a possible connection to Phelan, be it geographical, professional, or otherwise.
It is important to note that Keith Conlon was not on trial — he committed no crime that the DPP would bring to the Central Criminal Court — and further, by nature of his being dead, he was unable to defend himself before the court, a core principle of the Irish legal system. This did not stop his past from being presented before the jury, namely, a run-in he had with the police more than a decade ago, in which he assaulted a Garda after he had burgled a home.
Again, Phelan was on trial, not Conlon, so it remains unclear as to why this detail of Conlon’s life was important enough to be presented to the jury –- if not a thinly disguised attempt of character assassination, with the goal of making Conlon a less sympathetic victim in the eyes of the jury.
Two particular witnesses proved to be detrimental to the state’s case against Phelan.
The state Pathologist, who performs post-mortem exams for deaths suspected to be caused by criminal activity, was called to the stand to analyse the exact moment that Conlon was shot. Here, the one-metre range of the shot, the angle at which the bullet entered Conlon’s skull, and how this led to him being pronounced dead two days later in Tallaght Hospital was established before the jury.
After the state Pathologist’s testimony, Phelan’s team suddenly decided against calling their own post-mortem expert to address the jury — a clear sign that the state had inadvertently pleaded the defense’s argument, scoring an own goal.
The state’s failure to get the only eyewitness from Conlon’s hunting group to take the stand was a final blow to their case. Kallum Coleman was scheduled to address the jury, however, he failed to show up on the day, leading to the issuing of a warrant for his arrest. When members of An Garda Síochána eventually tracked him down and found him in Spain, they were unable to legally enforce this warrant as it was outside their jurisdiction.
They convinced Coleman to return to Ireland with them in order to take the stand. However, during a pit stop on the car ride to the airport, Coleman fled the vehicle. He later said that he was afraid of being known as a “rat” if he had taken the stand, a sentiment issued by the other man in their hunting group.
This incident took place in the final days of the trial, which was supposed to be the dramatic culmination of the state’s case with a man who would be unequivocally on Conlon’s side. This being stamped into the jury’s collective memory, it was all but decided that there was a reasonable doubt in their mind that Phelan acted out of aggression.
This is despite the ignorant statements attributed to Phelan in his police interviews in the days immediately after the shooting, in which he called the men travellers coming to fulfil threats they had made. It is of note that none of the men trespassing were members of the travelling community, nor would Phelan have been able to truly know this even if they had been.
“At the centre of this case, no matter how interesting or scandalous, is a dead man”
Afterword
The Phelan trial was heavily influenced by a very recent Supreme Court decision on the right to self-defence in the context of a murder charge. The Supreme Court set a precedent for murder charges to be more easily reduced to manslaughter and in some cases, full acquittal by advocating for route to verdict documents. This document helps jurors with minimal legal knowledge to understand the laws in question, thus naturally reducing the importance of a juror’s emotion-based view of the trial. A route to verdict document was provided to the Phelan jury.
It is important to remember that at the centre of this case, no matter how interesting or scandalous, is a dead man. He leaves behind four children and a wider family who have openly expressed their disappointment with the verdict. In their view, they are left wanting justice. However, the state simply couldn’t successfully move the needle in a situation where innocence is presumed, particularly when said innocence knows exactly how to prove it.