Claims of extortion could be investigated by gardaí

It was brought to the attention of Mr Justice Liam McKechnie - in the absence of the jury on Monday morning before the trial resumed - that an anonymous caller had left phone and text messages on defendant’s Stanley Bourke’s mobile phone last Thursday on the third day of the trial, attempting to extort €5,000 cash from him in exchange for information which he claimed would be crucial to his defence.
Mr Bourke’s senior counsel, Diarmuid McGuinness, told the judge that Mr Bourke left his mobile phone at home every day during the trial and that when he went home last Thursday evening he noticed he had a ‘missed call.’  He rang the number back and a man who refused to identify himself told him he had crucial information which would help his defence if he paid him €5,000.
Mr Bourke refused to pay the money and told the man to speak to his solicitor, Mr Patterson, if he had any information relevant to the trial.
The man sent a text message the following day, Friday, telling Mr. Bourke to reconsider his offer and that if he didn’t the jury had already made their minds up and had found him and the other defendants guilty.
Mr McGuinness said the man’s phone number had come in on each occasion on Mr Bourke’s phone and that he and Mr Bourke had made the prosecution team aware of the phone calls.
Mr Paul McDermott, SC, prosecuting, said the matter would be referred to the Gardaí and would be fully investigated.  He expressed a concern that members of the jury might have been influenced or ‘got at’ in any way during the trial.
Judge McKechnie told the prosecution and defence teams that he would ask each juror if they had been approached in any way by anyone asking them about the trial and he said he would discharge the jury if any of them told him that had been the case. 
He then called the jury in and without making any reference to the extortion phone calls, asked them individually if anyone had approached them and spoken to them about the trial since it started last Tuesday.
Each juror said in turn that they had not been approached by anyone and some said that if anyone had asked them they had told them they could not speak about the trial by direction of the trial judge.  One juror said a friend had asked him and he told him it was about ‘binmen from Mayo’.