A senior judge has rejected a bid to have the cases against three men accused of murdering east Belfast man Ian Ogle dismissed.
Following Mr Justice McFarland’s ruling, barristers representing the trio revealed none of the defendants would be giving evidence and that no evidence would be called on their behalf.
Mr Ogle, a 45-year old father-of-two, was beaten and stabbed 11 times yards from his Cluan Place home on January 27 2019.
In July, barristers acting on behalf of Walter Ervine (43), 38-year old Glenn Rainey and Robert Spiers (41) launched ‘no case to answer’ applications on the grounds there was insufficient evidence to proceed any further.
The applications were made at the conclusion of the Crown’s case.
It’s the Crown’s case that two minutes before the attack, CCTV from a Glider on Albertbridge Road captured a group of five men walking towards Cluan Place - and that these five were involved in the fatal assault.
Earlier this year, Jonathan Brown (39) from Whinney Hill in Dundonald and 45-year old Mark Sewell of of Glenmount Drive in Newtownabbey were handed life sentences after they pleaded guilty to murdering Mr Ogle.
Glenn Rainey (38) whose address was given as Ballyhalbert Caravan Park, Walter Irvine (43) from Litchfield Street in Belfast and 41-year old Robert Spiers from Millars Park in Dundonald all denied the charge and were the subject of a non-jury trial.
In their application that Rainey had ‘no case to answer’, his defence team submitted that following a July 2017 bar incident, there was no evidence of ongoing issues between him and Ian Ogle.
Rainey’s barrister said that as he and the co-accused were friends, there was no evidence to suggest mobile phone contact with them or his DNA present in a car was unusual.
The Crown’s case against Ervine also included his mobile phone usage on the evening of the murder.
It’s alleged that the five men involved met at Wye Street before going to Cluan Place, and that a man who they say could have been Ervine was seen cycling along Wye Street and dismounting from his bike in a similar method used by Ervine when he was captured on CCTV on a shop on Newtownards Road earlier that month.
During the trial, the Crown said Ervine was the ‘lead male’ caught on the Glider footage and that the clothes that male wore were similar to clothes worn by Ervine earlier that day.
Regarding his ‘no case to answer’ application, Ervine’s barrister pointed out the way he dismounted a bicycle was ‘not unique’ and that the motivation for using mobile phone usage on the night of the murder was ‘pure speculation’.
Regarding Spiers, his mobile phone activity with co-accused also formed part of the Crown’s case against.
Alleging Spiers was ‘male five’ in the group who entered Cluan Place, it’s the Crown’s case that he had a knife in his pocket.
A large ‘Ernesto’ knife was later recovered from the Connswater River in February 2019 and when Spiers home was searched, an ‘Ernesto’ knife set was located with one of the knives missing.
In an application to have the charge against Spiers dismissed, his barrister argued that the Ernesto knife set was widely available to buy and there was no evidence to link the knife found in the river to the murder.
Mr Justice McFarland acknowledged that whilst there were “flaws and gaps” in the Crown’s case, he was taking into account all the strands of evidence - and refused the defence applications.
The case will be listed again on October 18.