A former police officer who took selfies at the scene of a teenager’s death has been cleared of misconduct in a public office, a judge has ruled.
Ryan Connolly, 41, was found not guilty of four charges after Recorder of Manchester Judge Nicholas Dean KC discharged the jury part-way through his trial at Manchester Crown Court.
Judge Dean determined the prosecution’s evidence was insufficient to prove Mr Connolly committed misconduct, deeming it legally impermissible for a jury to consider verdicts.
Not guilty verdicts were formally recorded on Friday, the fifth day of proceedings.
He told the court: “My conclusion is the Crown cannot demonstrate the serious misconduct here, that the evidence is incapable of demonstrating serious misconduct, so the jury could not reach a conclusion so that Mr Connolly was guilty of misconduct in a public office.”
Prosecutors have until Monday to consider whether to appeal against the ruling.
Jurors had heard that Connolly, a constable with Merseyside Police, took selfies, including one lying on the grass, when he was deployed to guard a cordon after 16-year-old Daniel Gee-Jamieson was killed in Belle Vale, Liverpool, in 2018.
More than 50 photos, including pictures of vulnerable people detained at hospitals as well as images of force systems and Connolly’s colleagues, were found in the sent folder of WhatsApp on his personal phone when he was arrested in February 2020, the court heard.
Opening the trial on Tuesday, Peter Wilson, prosecuting, said: “The prosecution say he has wilfully misconducted himself by taking inappropriate photographs where, we say, there is no professional need to do so. He’s then retained them and sent them on.”
But the court heard that with the exception of one photo, sent to a supervising officer, there was no evidence of who Connolly sent the pictures to.
No messages accompanying the images had been retrieved from the phone.
The jury was told the defendant claimed the images were taken for work purposes, but the court heard they had not been uploaded to police systems.
At the hearing on Friday, a note from one juror had asked the court to explain why the defendant had taken the photos, adding: “What was he getting out of it?”
Judge Dean told jurors that misconduct in a public office is one of the few remaining common law offences which is hard to define and is often a form of corruption.
He gave the example of police officers sometimes being prosecuted for tipping off criminals about police investigations for money – but nothing like that had been suggested in Connolly’s case.
However Connolly, from Huyton, Merseyside, will be back at the same court on Monday to be sentenced for three counts of possession of extreme pornographic images which he previously admitted.
He was formally dismissed in 2021 by Merseyside Police, who described his behaviour as “deplorable”.
A misconduct hearing was told other images found on his phone were racist, homophobic and mocked disabled people, and messages showed he socialised with a known criminal.
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