Barrister, law lecturer and farmer Diarmuid Rossa Phelan has been acquitted of murdering a man who was trespassing on his land in February 2022.
Mr Phelan, 56, denied murdering 35-year-old Keith Conlon in February 2022 at Hazelgrove Farm, Kiltalown Lane, Tallaght in Dublin.
Ms Justice Siobhan Lankford told Mr Phelan he was “free to go” after the jury returned with their verdict.
The panel of nine men and three women returned their verdict to the judge, agreeing with the defence case that Mr Phelan was entitled to defend himself when he came under threat on his own land.
They spent six hours and 51 minutes over two days considering their verdict following a ten-week trial.
Mr Phelan, 56, made no reaction as the 12 jurors left the courtroom, but was later seen embracing his family.
Members of Mr Conlon’s family quickly left the courtroom as soon as the not guilty verdict was announced.
The jury rejected the State’s case that when the third shot was fired by Mr Phelan, the gun was pointed in the direction of Mr Conlon, who was shot in the back of the head when it was argued he had turned away to leave.
It was in those circumstances, the prosecution said, that Mr Phelan intended to either kill or cause serious injury to Mr Conlon.
Instead, the jurors accepted Mr Phelan’s position that he was acting in self defence after two trespassers were “coming to fulfil the threats they had made” and that he was fearful and facing an “imminent attack” as the men closed in on him.
The jury had the option of returning three verdicts in relation to the murder charge against Mr Phelan, namely: guilty of murder, not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter or not guilty.
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However, there was a choice of three paths to the panel’s finding that Mr Phelan was not guilty and entitled to an acquittal.
Firstly, if the jury found Mr Phelan did intend to kill or seriously injure the trespasser, they had to consider the issue of self defence raised by the defendant.
If the jury considered a reasonable person would have used the degree of force employed by Mr Phelan in the circumstances in which the accused genuinely believed them to be, Mr Phelan was entitled to an acquittal on the basis of self defence.
If the jury found the prosecution had not proven Mr Phelan had the intent to kill or cause serious injury and that he honestly believed he had to use force to protect himself and that the force used was reasonably necessary in the circumstances that Mr Phelan believed them to be, the verdict was not guilty of either murder or manslaughter.
An acquittal could also be recorded if the jury found that Mr Phelan did not intend to kill or seriously injure Mr Conlon, that he had an honest belief that force was necessary and that while the force he used was not reasonable, his actions were not objectively dangerous.
Mr Phelan went on trial last October after he pleaded not guilty to murdering the father-of-four at Hazelgrove Farm in 2022.
The defendant owns Hazelgrove, formerly a golf course in Tallaght.
It was the defence case that this was an unintended killing and what Mr Phelan had been trying to achieve in discharging the shots was not to strike Mr Conlon.
The jury had heard that on the day in question three men – the deceased Mr Conlon, along with Kallum Coleman and Robin Duggan – had trespassed on a wooded area of Mr Phelan’s land while engaged in the illegal blood sport of badger baiting.
Mr Phelan told gardaí in his interviews that he became concerned about a lurcher 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 Mr Conlon and Mr Coleman kept coming he believed they were “coming to fulfil the threats they had made”.
As they got closer, Mr Phelan shouted at the two 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”.
Mr Conlon, from Kiltalown Park in Tallaght, was seriously injured in the shooting on 22 February and died at Tallaght University Hospital two days later.
It was the defence’s contention that the third bullet had accidentally hit Mr Conlon through a combination of factors, including an unintended deviation in the alignment of the gun as a result of the repeated firing under stress and Mr Conlon’s movement uphill.
It was entirely possible, the defence argued, that the deceased had walked up the incline into a shot intended to clear his head.
The defence also submitted that where Mr Conlon was stuck could have happened by him turning his head and not his body.
