The jury unanimously found him guilty of manslaughter.

Sentencing him earlier this year, Carney described the firing of the fatal shot on the road outside Nally's home. "John Ward was in manifest retreat, " Carney said. "John Ward was stooped over when he was shot.

These are the factual matters.

All justification had ceased at that point." He said the matter of addressing sentencing for the guilty man was the most difficult he had to deal with in his 14 years on the bench. He ordered that Nally serve six years in prison.

The Court of Criminal Appeal said Carney erred in not permitting a not guilty verdict. A retrial was ordered.

Last week, in charging the jury, Judge O'Higgins pointed out the difference in the interpretation of reasonable force in coming to a verdict.

"If Mr Nally was frightened, scared, obsessed, and if he used no more force than he thought appropriate or reasonable, but more than what the objective person thought reasonable, then he is guilty of manslaughter." This is the subjective defence in which the jury accepts that Nally's actions were reasonable because, in the heat of the moment, he thought them reasonable.

However, the judge added that the subjective defence could reduce murder to manslaughter, but not manslaughter to acquittal. For a jury to acquit, they themselves, as objective observers, must believe that Nally's actions were reasonable. After deliberating over two and a half days, the jury concluded that Nally had, in killing John Ward, acted reasonably. What the original trial judge had deemed would be a "perverse" verdict, a jury of eight men and four women decided was the one that would best serve the interests of justice, as interpreted by the law.