22 hours Ago By Paul Higgins
Did you know with an ad-lite subscription to NorthernIrelandWorld, you get 70% fewer ads while viewing the news that matters to you. Standing in the dock of Coleraine Magistrates’ Court, 71-year-old Anne Broughton confirmed that she understood the single charge against her and also that she had no objections to her case being returned for trial to the Crown Court. Broughton, from the Whitepark Road in Ballycastle, is accused of causing the death of David Tweed by driving carelessly on the Whitepark Road on October 28, 2021.
Advertisement Advertisement None of the background facts of the case were opened in court but it was reported at the time how 61-year-old Tweed died at the scene when his motorcycle was in collision with a car around 4.30pm that day. A former international rugby player who was capped four times for Ireland, Tweed served on Ballymena council for the DUP and later the TUV.
As a former member of the Orange Order in Dunloy, he was involved in the Harryville dispute when loyalists picketed a Catholic church in Ballymena but he left the DUP in 2007 over the party's decision to share power with Sinn Fein and later joined Jim Allister's Traditional Unionist Voice. In 2012 a Crown Court jury found him guilty of 13 counts of indecent assault, gross indecency with a child and inciting gross indecency with a child and he was handed an eight-year jail sentence for those crimes. Advertisement Advertisement He appealed however and having served four years behind bars, the Court of Appeal quashed Tweed’s convictions, citing the prejudicial nature of the trial judge’s charge to the jury.
In Coleraine Magistrates Court on Thursday, a prosecuting lawyer submitted there was a prima facie case against Broughton and while the 71-year-old declined to comment on the charge, defence counsel Thomas McKeever conceded there was a case to answer. Applying for legal aid to be extended to allow a senior barrister to be instructed, Mr McKeever revealed the defence will be seeking an expert report so given the nature of the charge and “the complexities of the offences itself..
.we would be keen to get senior counsel involved at an early stage”. Returning the case to Antrim Crown Court for trial and freeing Broughton on £500 bail until her arraignment on May 7.
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