{"id":122533,"date":"2025-11-05T04:23:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T04:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/122533\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T04:23:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T04:23:13","slug":"they-played-the-system-and-tried-to-play-you-key-witnesses-in-ruth-lawrence-murder-trial-are-untrustworthy-defence-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/122533\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;They played the system and tried to play you&#8217;: key witnesses in Ruth Lawrence murder trial are untrustworthy, defence says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Ruth Lawrence, Anthony Keegan and Eoin O'Connor.\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/55cde356-3f27-4e97-b49e-c5447af88c7e.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Ruth Lawrence, Anthony Keegan and Eoin O&#8217;Connor.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Two protected witnesses who painted themselves as &#8220;innocents abroad&#8221; downplayed their own roles and cannot be trusted to convict Ruth Lawrence of murdering two men, her defence barrister has argued, telling a jury that: &#8220;they played the system and they tried to play you&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Defence counsel Patrick Gageby SC urged the jurors in his closing address not to convict the 46-year-old Dublin woman, calling the foundations of the State&#8217;s case &#8220;shaky&#8221; and describing it as the &#8220;slimmest of prosecution cases&#8221;. &#8220;Too slim to justify a conviction,&#8221; he told the panel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ruth Lawrence, Anthony Keegan and Eoin O&#8217;Connor. Two protected witnesses who painted themselves as &#8220;innocents abroad&#8221; downplayed their&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122534,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,898,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-122533","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-latest-news-ticker","11":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}