An RTV document, a written aid guiding juries towards a legally sound verdict, was used in a recent trial following a Supreme Court ruling clarifying the law on self-defense in murder cases. The Supreme Court decision, which addressed how self-defense might lessen a murder charge to manslaughter or acquittal, heavily influenced the trial's charge on the law and the jury's deliberations.
An RTV is a written aid containing questions, focusing on the law, issues and evidence in the case, aimed at leading the jury to a legally justified verdict. It was opened just days after the Supreme Court delivered an important judgment clarifying the law on self-defence in the context of a murder charge.
That judgment dismissed an appeal by Mark Crawford (44), formerly of Quarry Road, Thomondgate, Co Limerick, over his 2020 conviction for the murder on July 7th, 2018 of Patrick ‘Pa’ O’Connor, who died after Crawford stabbed him six times in a bar in Limerick city. Crawford’s claim he acted in self-defence out of honest belief he was under threat of an imminent attack was rejected by the trial jury. When jailing Crawford for life, Ms Justice Tara Burns described the assault as an act “of madness, fuelled by drink and drugs”. In the Supreme Court judgment, Ms Justice Aileen Donnelly set out a sample charge for judges concerning the law on self-defence which addressed how it may, depending on the facts and evidence in each case, reduce a murder charge to one of manslaughter or acquittal. Shop owners who felt ‘betrayed’ by manager attending job interview ordered to pay €13,500 for unfair dismissalIt may be suitable to give a jury a “route to verdict” (RTV) document which should take into account the issues for determination in a specific trial, she said. She set out a sample RTV, involving certain questions to be answered by juries in the context of cases where self-defence was raised as a defence to murder. The Crawford decision, as the most up-to-date statement of the law concerning self-defence in answer to a murder charge, was extensively referred to during Phelan’s trial. Ms Justice Siobhán Lankford’s charge on the law appeared modelled on the sample charge in Crawford and, on its conclusion, she provided each juror with a RTV document. Counsel for both sides had prepared draft RTVs but the judge decided the content of the final documen
RTV Self-Defense Murder Supreme Court Jury Instructions
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