FORMER JOURNALIST GEMMA O’Doherty has withdrawn her legal challenge against a conviction imposed by Bray District Court last year in relation to an altercation with gardaí over the placement of anti-vaccination banners on a footbridge over the main Dublin-Wexford road.
A sitting of Wicklow Circuit Criminal Court was due to hear an appeal by lawyers for O’Doherty against her conviction for threatening and abusive behaviour, resisting arrest and refusing to give her name and address to a Garda on the pedestrian bridge over the N11 at Kilmacanogue, Co Wicklow on 28 August 2020.
However, when the case was called by the court registrar today, O’Doherty’s solicitor, Brendan Maloney, said he had received instructions from his client to withdraw the appeal.
O’Doherty (54), whose address cannot be published as a result of a High Court order, was not in court for the scheduled hearing.
The former journalist, who has played a leading role in recent years in anti-immigration and anti-vaccination campaigns, was given a two-month suspended sentence and fined €750 in September 2021 after being found guilty of a number of public order offences.
After hearing that her appeal had been withdrawn, Judge Patrick Quinn granted an application made by counsel for the DPP for the forfeiture by O’Doherty of three banners that had been seized during the incident.
The signs included messages which read “no forced vaccines” and “masks spread virus”.
During the original District Court case 12 months ago, evidence was heard from Garda witnesses that a number of complaints had been received about the banners from members of the public.
Gardaí said they decided to remove the banners from the footbridge after observing that some motorists were swerving as a result of being distracted by the signs.
The court heard that gardaí at the scene were called “traitors to the Irish public” and accused of being complicit in the cover-up of paedophilia and murder by the defendant who also refused to provide her name and address when asked.
Judge David Kennedy said the evidence showed that there had been a clear and intentional breach of the peace and he described the words used by O’Doherty to gardaí as “atrocious.”
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