A row that broke out during a sheep sale at a Donegal mart was played out in court this week.
Stranorlar man Kieran Bradley was cleared of an assault charge relating to an incident at Raphoe Mart on December 13, 2021 when he appeared at Letterkenny District Court this week.
Upon viewing footage of what she described as an ‘unsavoury’ incident, Judge Éiteáin Cunningham said the bar wasn’t reached to convict Bradley, of Ard McCool in Stranorlar, of assaulting Neil Doherty.
Mr Doherty claimed in court that Bradley left his spot, which had been allocated as part of Covid-19 precautions, and when he realised that Mr Doherty’s son had bought the sheep he began calling: ‘Don’t worry, daddy will pay for that’.
“Then he jumped up,” Mr Doherty told the court. “He kept going with the elbow and laughing into my face. I told him to stay back.”
Mr Doherty claimed that Bradley ‘nudged’ him a third time before ‘he just jumped up, caught me with his two arms around the neck and pulled me back’.
“I didn’t know where I was,” Mr Doherty told the court. “I was out of breath.”
He said an ambulance was called and he was taken to Letterkenny University Hospital for assessment.
“I attended Raphoe mart on a weekly basis but I haven’t been back in Raphoe mart since,” he said. He claimed that the incident left him ‘unable to look about my own animals’.
Solicitor for Bradley, Mr Frank Dorrian, told Mr Doherty that he had not mentioned the ‘nudging’ to gardai when he initially made a statement of complaint.
Mr Dorrian put it to Mr Doherty that he winked at Bradley and said ‘I’ve got you now, Bradley’ and this was denied. “I wasn’t fit to speak,” Mr Doherty said.
Mr Dorrian told the court that it was Bradley who called the ambulance.
“I put it to you that some banter was going on,” Mr Dorrian said. “Everyone was leaning over the ring, there was a whole row of people, shoulder-to-shoulder, looking at animals in the ring and there was a bit of banter, discussion, sarcasm.”
Mr Dorrian said the allegation that Bradley had dragged Mr Doherty to the ground was ‘simply not true’. CCTV was played in court and, upon viewing the footage, Mr Dorrian told the alleged injured party: “He didn’t nudge you at all.”
Mr Niall Doherty, the complainant’s son, took to the witness box. He said he was bidding for sheep when Bradley grabbed his father by the throat and he was ‘gasping for breath’.
“When I turned around, he had a hold of my father by the throat and he pulled him back over the chair,” Mr Niall Doherty said.
The footage was played twice to Mr Niall Doherty. Judge Cunningham asked him to pinpoint the moment where Bradley had his father by the throat.
Mr Dorrian said that his client’s hands could be ‘clearly seen’ throughout the footage while leaning over the rails, drinking his tea and clapping his hands.
“His hands never go near his neck,” he said.
Garda Tom Moore read a statement given by Bradley when interviews by gardai. He said that when Mr Doherty’s son’s name was called for the sheep he started clapping his hands. At that stage, he claimed that Mr Doherty ‘was a totally changed man’.
He said that he was drinking tea and ‘exchanging words’ with Mr Doherty when he nudged him. “There was no force behind it and he lunged at me,” Mr Bradley said.
Mr Bradley told gardai in his statement that Mr Doherty looked up and winked at him saying: “I’ve got you now, Bradley.”
Garda Moore agreed when Mr Dorrrian put it to him that Mr Doherty senior had criticised Bradley for buying the sheep overpriced and it was his son, Niall Doherty, who bought them.
Mr Dorrian said the discussion that took place was the ’type of ribald conversation that goes on in a mart’.
“Marts are not conducted in the same manner as elocution lessons,” Mr Dorrian said. “They are robust places with this kind of banter; it is part and parcel of the place. The kind of language heard is not the kind of language you would hear at afternoon tea.”
Mr Dorrian argued that if his client had nudged the complainant ‘that is not an assault’. “Nudging people is perfectly normal. Assault has to begin with an intention. If anyone behaved badly here, it was Mr Doherty.”
In response, Inspector Paul McHugh said that the same law still applies at a mart and added: “It is not the case that this was done in jest. It was done to seek a response and it wasn’t done in a jestful manner.”
Inspector McHugh said that while the allegation that Bradley had grabbed Mr Doherty by the neck was not clear, the defendant had admitted to ‘nudging’ him. “That is an allegation of assault, albeit a very minor assault,” Inspector McHugh said.
Mr Dorrian pointed out that his client was in court to meet a charge of assault by grabbing someone around the neck. He said CCTV footage ‘shows that he didn’t and to suggest otherwise is just absurd’.
“The CCTV is forensic evidence and that is clearly not what happened,” Mr Dorrian said.
Judge Cunningham said she listened carefully to the evidence and the submissions and took careful consideration of the CCTV footage, which she viewed on three separate occasions in the court.
Judge Cunningham said that she was satisfied ‘that the bar has not been reached in terms of the threshold to mark a conviction’. The assault charge against Bradley was dismissed by the Judge.
Judge Cunningham found the facts proven for the charge of engaging in threatening and abusive behaviour in a public place, noting that the behaviour was ‘unsavoury and certainly the clapping was done in an effort to provoke a reaction’.
At the end of the hearing, Mr Dorrian contested that the mart did not fall under the definition of a ‘public place’.
“There is a door policy and people essentially pay to get in,” he said. “The office under the Public Order Act refers to ‘a public place’.”
He said people are allowed in when they either buy a ticket or are allocated a ticket and members of the public do not have a ‘right’ to enter.
Inspector McHugh said it was his belief that ‘any member of the public can walk in’.
Mr Dorrian said Bradley is a married farmer and this represented ‘as benign a breach of the public order act – if it is’. Judge Cunningham convicted Bradley for this offence and fined him €200, allowing five months to pay. Recognisance, in the event of an appeal, was fixed in Bradley’s own bond of €200, nil cash.