Eddie Meenan murder accused ‘didn’t see what happened’: QC

Sean Rodgers (34), of no fixed abode, and Walters (22), with an address in Crossgar, are charged with murdering Edward Meenan murder on November 25, 2018.

They are also charged with assaulting William McConnell on the same date.

A third man, Derek Creswell (29), of King’s Lane in Ballykelly, has already pleaded guilty to both charges.

On Tuesday, John Kearney QC, counsel for Walters, commenced his closing address to the trial which started on January 31.

The barrister said his client’s case was simple: that he did not touch Mr Meenan.

He said that, after the initial stages of the incident, Walters went back into the kitchen of the property and did not see what happened in the back yard.

Mr Kearney said that a lot of what Walters said in evidence had gone unchallenged.

The jury was told that Walters was entitled to ‘the presumption of innocence’ unless they decided otherwise.

The barrister said that, once Walters’ defence team introduced evidence that implicated the other defendant, Rodgers, as the person who had stabbed Mr Meenan, ‘Rodgers, out of revenge, told lies about Walters.’

He said that Rodgers had committed ‘nailed on perjury’ with his evidence and had been seen to threaten Walters in video recorded in a prison van and shown to the jury earlier this week.

Mr Kearney said that, if the jury believed it was a joint enterprise, then they had to be sure the accused had acted as ‘a three man group’.

But, he added, if they believed Rodgers and Cresswell were ‘joined at the hip’ and were acting as a two man group, then that called into question any idea of joint enterprise which he described as ‘very tricky.’

The barrister said his client accepted that ‘what happened should never have happened’ but asked the jury what they would have done if they had been in the same situation with two masked men arriving at the back door.

He said that, ‘initially’, self defence kicked in but, then, things went ‘too far’.

The trial continues.