An “unfortunate situation” has led to the discharge of a jury in the trial of a man accused of murdering his friend in circumstances of “almost indescribable savagery”.<\/p>\n
Liam O’Leary, 33, pleaded not guilty to the murder of 58-year-old John Casserley at a Peter McVerry Trust housing unit on Tone Street, Ballina, Co Mayo between 23 and 24 October 2024.<\/p>\n
Mr O’Leary’s trial began at the Central Criminal Court eight days ago and it had been expected that the prosecution would complete its evidence this week.<\/p>\n
However, Ms Justice Melanie Greally told the jury that due to an “unfortunate situation”, the trial cannot continue.<\/p>\n
She thanked them for doing their civic duty by agreeing to sit in what she said has been “a deeply disturbing and unpleasant trial”.<\/p>\n
She excused the jurors from further service for five years.<\/p>\n
The case will be mentioned again before the court on 15 April.<\/p>\n
Opening the trial on 10 March, prosecution senior counsel Dean Kelly told the jury Mr Casserley died in circumstances of “almost indescribable savagery”, having been stabbed 27 times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An “unfortunate situation” has led to the discharge of a jury in the trial of a man accused…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339145,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-352973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352973","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=352973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}