“I’m relieved. I told them I was innocent" says man acquitted of attempted murder

Saturday 04 March 2017

In an Express interview just minutes after being acquitted of attempted murder, grave and criminal assault, and attempting to pervert the course of justice, 49-year-old Gerard Maguire simply said he was “relieved” and that he’d always said he was “innocent”.

After a four-day trial, which unusually carried on to Saturday, proceedings ended in a dramatic fashion with the jury unanimously clearing Mr Maguire of attempting to murder, or of a grave and criminal assault on his friend, 63-year-old Shaun Patrick Howard.

But it didn't end there. The drama increased and the tension mounted further when the jury said they couldn’t agree on whether Mr Maguire had attempted to pervert the course of justice. That meant each of the 12 men and women of the jury had to leave their bench and whisper their verdict into the ears of the judge and the Greffier, whilst the accused and his team looked on anxiously. 10 out of 12 needed to find him guilty for the charge to stand. He was acquitted.

During the trial, the Court heard widely differing accounts of what had happened on the night.

It was agreed the two men were good friends, and that they were at Mr Howard’s home in Journeaux Court in St Helier on the evening of Saturday 29 October and into the following morning having drinks, playing cards and watching TV when the incident happened.

But after that their stories diverged.

Mr Howard claimed that when he asked Mr Maguire – who was heavily intoxicated – to go home, he got aggressive and charged at him with a knife, threatening to kill him, and stabbing him in the neck.

Mr Maguire claimed Mr Howard provoked the incident by throwing a glass at him, that he picked up the knife in self-defence, and that in the ensuing scuffle Howard accidentally stabbed himself.

The blade of the knife came away from the handle during the attack, and medics say the neck injury was potentially "life-threatening".

After the assault, Mr Howard staggered from his flat, leaving a trail of blood, to a nearby home where a party was in full swing. They looked after him and called an ambulance.

Mr Maguire went home where he put his blood-splattered clothes in the washing machine. He told the court this was because he wanted to clean them, and that he switched on the machine because it was already half full. He denied it was to cover his tracks. If that had been the case, he said, he’d have put his blood-soaked trainers in there as well, or would have attempted to get rid of them. The jury cleared him of the charge.