How Gerard Hutch murder trial made international headlines

Gerard Hutch leaving court after being found not guilty

Gerard Hutch has been cleared of murdering 33-year-old David Byrne during a boxing weigh-in at Dublin's Regency Airport Hotel in 2016.

Former Sinn Féin councillor Jonathan Dowdall had been charged with the murder but pleaded guilty to the lesser offence of facilitating murder.

The murder was part of the Hutch-Kinahan gang feud that has claimed 18 lives.

Who is Gerard Hutch?

Gerard or Gerry Hutch, 60, first came to attention as a young criminal when he was 10.

He was a leader of a gang of child criminals known as the Bugsy Malones in Dublin's north inner city.

Bugsy Malone was a 1976 movie in which child actors played the role of adults.

He graduated to more serious crime, specialising in robberies. In 1999 he paid £1.2m to the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB), which was set up to pursue the unexplained wealth of alleged criminals.

He is known as "The Monk" for his simple lifestyle. He doesn't drink alcohol, take drugs or smoke.

Who is Jonathan Dowdall?

Jonathan Dowdall is an electrician and a former Sinn Féin councillor from Dublin's north inner city.

In 2016 gardai (Irish police) raided his home on suspicion that he was a member of the IRA and was in possession of firearms.

In the course of their search they found video evidence on his computer of Dowdall and his father torturing a man by waterboarding him in a dispute over the sale of a motorbike.

He was jailed for that offence in 2017 and released in April 2022.

Jonathan Dowdall is a former Sinn Féin councillor

He was due to stand trial with Gerard Hutch for the murder of David Byrne but in October 2022 he pleaded guilty to the lesser offence of facilitating the murder.

He had rented a room at the Regency Airport Hotel for the killers.

He is currently serving a four-year sentence and gave state evidence against Gerard Hutch.

He applied to join the Republic of Ireland's witness protection programme but was told his application was not dependent on his evidence in the trial.

Why was there was so much interest in the case?

There was mobile phone video recordings of the shooting, so the murder became an international story.

The case also shone a light on the murky interface between Irish criminality, paramilitarism and politics.

Who are the Kinahans?

The Regency Hotel murder brought public attention to the Kinahan gang - sometimes called a cartel - and revealed its international links.

It is Ireland's wealthiest, most powerful and ruthless criminal gang.

Seventeen of the 18 murders in the Hutch-Kinahan gang feud were carried out on behalf of the Kinahans.

The feud began in September 2015 when the Kinahans murdered Gerard Hutch's nephew, Gary, in Marbella, Spain. He was a member of their gang but they believed he was an informer.

The Kinahan gang was founded by Christy Kinahan Sr but it is believed its day-to-day operations are now controlled by sons Daniel, in particular, and Christopher Jr.

The gang is heavily associated with international drugs trafficking.

But in recent years Daniel Kinahan also got involved in high-profile boxing.

In April 2022 the US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) put up rewards of $5m for the capture of the three men.

What was the case against Gerard Hutch?

The prosecution argued that Gerard Hutch was part of the six-man murder team, was one of three men disguised as members of an elite Irish police unit and was one of the two gunmen who fired the fatal shots at David Byrne. It was the second murder in the feud.

The state's case depended on the content of secret garda (Irish police) recordings of the two men as they travelled to Strabane in Northern Ireland to seek republican mediation in the feud.

They also handed over the guns used in the Regency shooting to dissident republicans.

The prosecution argued that the secret recordings reveal that Gerard Hutch was a gang leader who had it within his power to dispose of the guns.

The state case also depended on two claims made by Dowdall:

• The key to the hotel room used by the killers was handed to Gerard Hutch before the shooting

• Mr Hutch admitted to Dowdall at a morning meeting in a north Dublin park that he was one of the two murderers.

How important was Dowdall's credibility?

There was no independent corroboration of Dowdall's claims.

There were many contradictions between what Dowdall said in sworn testimony and what he said in both the secretly recorded garda conversations and what he told detectives in his officially-recorded police interviews in the presence of his solicitors.

He told the court the contradictions were "lies of necessity" because he wanted to impress Gerard Hutch, because he was scared for his life and those of his family and because he was on medication for depression.

The prosecution conceded that Dowdall was not an ideal character and had an association with Pearse McAuley, an IRA prisoner who had escaped from Brixton prison 1991, served 10 and a half years in prison for the manslaughter of Detective Garda Jerry McCabe in 1996 and had also seriously assaulted his then wife in 2014.

But the state's legal team argued that just because he had told lies in the past didn't mean he not telling the truth now.

Mr Hutch's barrister described Dowdall as "a proven and admitted liar and perjurer" who had manipulated his position by playing "cat and mouse" with the state to get the murder charge against him dropped for a lesser offence and sentence.

In giving the verdict, Ms Justice Burns said there were questions about Dowdall's relationship with the truth.

Has Sinn Féin been damaged by the trial?

Sinn Féin moved quickly to condemn Dowdall after he was found guilty of kidnapping and torture.

He and the party had already gone their separate ways and in his evidence in this trial he repeatedly said he didn't want his testimony to be used to damage the party.

Sinn Féin briefly saw its poll rating decline marginally during the case.

But it is now back to where it was and Sinn Féin remains the most popular political party south of the Irish border.