Lyra McKee murder committal hearing ‘not ready to proceed’

The mixed committal hearing of a man accused of the murder of Lyra McKee is “not in a position to proceed” next week.
Paul McIntyre is accused of the murder of Lyra McKeePaul McIntyre is accused of the murder of Lyra McKee
Paul McIntyre is accused of the murder of Lyra McKee

The hearing, which was expected to last five days, was due to begin at Derry Magistrate’s Court on Monday, June 15.

Paul McIntyre (52), of Kinnego Park, is charged with the murder of Ms McKee, possessing a firearm with intent, and belonging to a proscribed organisation.

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He is further charged, along with 39-year-old Christopher Gillen, of Balbane Pass, with throwing and possessing petrol bombs, hijacking, arson and rioting on April 18, last year.

The court has previously heard that there were issues regarding McIntyre accessing videolink equipment to attend court remotely in Roe House, where he is currently on remand in Maghaberry Prison.

Defence counsel Mark Mulholland QC said that the High Court had ruled that ‘it is for the magistrate’s court to make a determination on that.’

Mr Mulholland said they had written to the Prison Service and their representatives to advise them of the situation, but they had received no response and in the absence of their representatives attending court, they were unable to move the application.

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The barrister said there was a further issue in that the defence had received over 1,000 pages of disclosure from the prosecution this week.

He said these include ‘heavily redacted and illegible’ material from the prosecutions’s expert witness, nine videos, 63 still images and 99 further parts of video.

Mr Mulholland said this was on top of nine hours of video footage they had already received.

He told the court the defence have instructed their own expert in relation to the video footage and he would require at least a week to consider these and put them into a format for them to be shown to witnesses ‘smoothly and without continuous delay’ during cross-examination.

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The barrister added that as yet, the defence have not received legal aid funding for this to be done.

Mr Mulholland said that as a result ‘we cannot say that we are ready for next week for us to be in a position to cross-examine these witnesses.’

A prosecutor told the court the prosecution was ready to proceed and had taken every step to get this case on.

He added that the defence had received papers in the case in March and had made ‘late requests’ for disclosure.

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Granting the application to adjourn the case, District Judge Ted Magill said he was ‘not go to get into a blame game, we are where we are.”

He said that while papers were served in March, he said everyone was “trying to deal with all this in utterly unprecedented circumstances we have been and are living in”.

“I am sure that counsel and solicitors have been doing their level best in very difficult circumstances to progress this case and it is with reluctance I will take the case out of next week,” Judge Magill said.

The case has been listed for review on June 25.