The judge in the case of law professor Diarmuid Phelan, who denies murdering a trespasser on his farm, has told the jury that they will be accommodated as they were now in week nine of a trial they were initially told would last six weeks.
Presiding judge Ms Justice Siobhan Lankford has not yet concluded her charge to the 12 jurors in the Central Criminal Court trial of Mr Phelan (56), who has pleaded not guilty to murdering father-of-four Keith 'Bono' Conlon (36) at Hazelgrove Farm, Kiltalown Lane, Tallaght, Dublin 24 on February 24th, 2022.
The accused man is a barrister, law lecturer and farmer who owns Hazelgrove, formerly a golf course in Tallaght.
Before the judge let the jury of nine men and three women go home for the evening, she thanked them for their attention, noting it had been a "long day". Ms Justice Lankford said she would continue with recapping the evidence in the trial tomorrow morning.
When Ms Justice Lankford suggested a 9am start on Wednesday morning, one of the jurors said she didn't think some of them would be at the Criminal Courts of Justice building by then.
The judge then suggested a 9.30am start tomorrow and told the jurors that none of this was any of their fault. She said the jury must be accommodated as they were initially told the trial would last six weeks and they were "now in week nine and going into week ten".
She asked the jury if 9.45am tomorrow morning was a more realistic start time and the jurors agreed with that suggestion.
In her charge on Monday, the presiding judge told the jury they must consider whether the State has proven it is not reasonably possible that Mr Phelan unintentionally hit a trespasser on his farm with a third shot from his revolver.
Ms Justice Lankford also told the jury that if they found Mr Phelan did intend to kill or seriously injure the trespasser, they must consider the issue of self defence raised by the defendant.
She told the panel that there were three verdicts they could return in relation to the murder charge against Mr Phelan, namely; guilty of murder, not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter or not guilty.
The jury has heard that on the day in question three men - the deceased Keith Conlon, along with Kallum Coleman and Robin Duggan - had trespassed on a wooded area of Mr Phelan's land while hunting foxes or badgers.
Mr Phelan told gardai in his interviews that he became concerned about a dog running loose on his land towards his sheep. When he got a view of the dog, he shot it with his Winchester rifle, whereupon he said three men immediately "exploded" from the woods and began threatening him.
Mr Phelan said he was shaking with fear and had "scrambled" up a bank to get away but when the two men kept coming he believed they were "coming to fulfil the threats they had made".
As they got closer, Mr Phelan shouted at two of the unarmed trespassers on his farm to "get back" before he fired three shots from his Smith & Wesson revolver and said he was "stunned when one man went down".
It is the State's case that two of the three shots were fired into the air, while the third connected with Mr Conlon.
It is also the prosecution's case that when the third shot was fired by Mr Phelan, the gun was pointed in the direction of the deceased who was shot in the back of the head when he had turned away to leave. It is in those circumstances, the prosecution say, that the accused intended to kill or cause serious injury to Mr Conlon.
It is the defence's position that Mr Phelan accidentally hit Mr Conlon while firing three "warning shots".
