Man jailed over loyalist show of strength in east Belfast to have conviction quashed
A man jailed for taking part in a so-called loyalist show of strength in east Belfast is to have his conviction quashed, the Court of Appeal ruled today.
Senior judges held Derek Lammey was wrongly found guilty of intimidation on the basis of voice recognition evidence from police officers.
The 60-year-old, of Spring Place in the city, will now be freed from prison after prosecutors were denied a retrial.
Lammey had been convicted in connection with a gathering of up to 40 masked men at Pitt Park in February 2021.
The group gathered in the area and walked to a nearby community centre where a number of women and children were taking shelter. Those inside the building included the wife and daughter of murdered east Belfast man Ian Ogle.
Mr Ogle was beaten and stabbed to death near his home at Cluan Place back in January 2019.
Following a non-jury trial at Belfast Crown Court last year, Lammey was acquitted on separate charges of unlawful assembly and affray over the Pitt Park incident.
But the judge found him guilty of intimidation through taking part in what was described as a show of strength by an unspecified loyalist organisation.
Co-accused Stephen Matthews, 62, of Pansy Street in Belfast, was cleared on all charges of involvement with the masked group.
Lammey, who received an 18-month sentence, centred his challenge to the conviction on identification evidence from two police officers who recorded the incident on body-worn cameras.
They both claimed to have recognised his voice as being one of the crowd at the scene.
Defence lawyers told the Court of Appeal it was mere assertions from non-experts without any further context for their attributions.
Barrister Joseph O’Keeffe KC argued that the officers’ evidence wrongly became the determining factor in Lammey being found guilty of intimidation.
“In a case of someone passing by, speaking at maximum four words behind a mask and outside, it is hard to imagine worse circumstances to recognise a voice,” he submitted. “We don’t know the last time these two officers heard Mr Lammey’s voice, if ever.”
Mr O’Keefe added: “It is difficult to think of a weaker identification case that could come before the court.”
Prosecutors accepted a proper warning was not given about the potential dangers of relying on voice recognition from non-experts in criminal cases.
Backing the defence’s case, Lady Chief Justice Dame Siobhan Keegan held that it would have highlighted frailties in the evidence.
“Identification by voice is even less reliable than eye-witness identification or recognition,” she said. “Even a confident recognition of a familiar voice by a lay listener may nevertheless be wrong.”
Dame Siobhen, sitting with Lord Justice Colton and Mr Justice O’Hara, stressed this was the evidence which had “tipped the balance” into Lammey being found guilty.
“This conviction cannot be said to be safe and must be quashed,” she held.
“(The trial judge) should not have relied on the voice recognition evidence for a conviction in the absence of the warning, and having found the other identification evidence unconvincing to the criminal standard which led to the acquittal of the co-accused Mr Matthews.”
Following the ruling, prosecution counsel sought to have Lammey stand trial again on the intimidation charge.
But citing the passage of time and six-month period Lammey has spent behind bars, the Lady Chief Justice confirmed: “We do not consider this is a case where we should order a retrial.”
Outside court Lammey’s solicitor, Magan Burns of Phoenix Law, welcomed the verdict.
She said: “This is a classic example of the dangers of police officers seeking to rely on familiarity to ground identifications, as opposed to independent evidence.”