Henry Reilly: Councillor has police officer assault convictions quashed

Henry Reilly is an Independent Unionist councillor on Newry, Mourne and Down District Council

A unionist councillor who was convicted of assaulting a female police officer has had his convictions quashed.

Henry Reilly, 62, of Ballynahatten Road in Kilkeel, is an Independent Unionist councillor on Newry, Mourne and Down District Council.

In June, he was convicted of two counts of assaulting a female police officer at his home in September 2019.

He was also convicted of resisting two police officers in the execution of their duties.

However, the judge at Newry County Court of Appeal agreed to applications to quash the convictions on Tuesday.

Judge Gordon Kerr said: "I cannot be sure that they (the police constables) were acting in execution of their duty at the time of the alleged assaults."

Summing up the case in his judgement, Judge Kerr said the defendant's daughter made two phone calls to police, the first to report she and her mother had been assaulted by Mr Reilly and the other to tell them "they were not required".

The judge said the women did not make a formal statement when officers arrived but an account was recorded on body-worn cameras during which the women told them Mr Reilly was "asleep in another room".

Cameras 'hardly used'

The judge said that officers went in and "aggressively woke him up", ordered him to leave the house and surrender his legally-held firearm.

He said Mr Reilly then went in to the kitchen, where his wife and daughter came into the room at different times and were asked to leave.

The judge said then as Mr Reilly went to move towards the door "the officers intervened, they said to stop him going towards the door" but he grabbed the female officer by the back of the head and forced her to the ground.

Her colleague tried to intervene and during the ensuing struggle is when the alleged assault occurred.

However, the judge added that "cross-examination painted a slightly different picture", and that body-worn cameras were "hardly used at all" despite policies on their use.

He said there were questions over whether officers had the power to eject Mr Reilly from his own home given the attitude of the two women who had "tried to intervene in favour of the applicant".

Judge Kerr said he had also given consideration to a medical report that showed Mr Reilly sustained fractures to his left wrist and a finger during the incident.

The judge said it was possible that having "just been woken violently" and told he had to leave the house "even though there was no power to do so", that Mr Reilly had gone to the kitchen to get a drink of water.

He said this "appears to have been seen by the officers as a challenge to their authority", and that they tried to "further express their authority by stopping him" from leaving the kitchen.

Judge Kerr said the officers' suggestion that Mr Reilly was being restrained to "stop him attacking his family is, in my view, entirely unsustainable".