The Pitstop Ploughshares were a group of five members of the Catholic Worker Movement who made their way into Shannon Airport in Ireland and damaged a United States Navy C-40 transport aircraft in the early hours of 3 February 2003.
[2] The five members were Deirdre Clancy, Nuin Dunlop, Karen Fallon, Ciaron O'Reilly and Damien Moran.
[3] Their March 2005 trial collapsed on the sixth day when Judge O'Donnell called a mistrial,[4] having made biased comments about a defence witness.
[citation needed] The October 2005 re-trial collapsed on the tenth day, after Judge Donagh MacDonagh agreed with defence counsel that his attendance at the United States presidential inauguration in 2001 of George W. Bush (along with other meetings he had with Bush when he was Governor of Texas) were grounds for his removal from the case, in that his role was tainted with a "perception of bias".
After four-and-a-half hours of deliberation, the Dublin jury of seven women and five men returned and gave their decision that all the accused should be acquitted, as they were acting to save lives and property in Iraq and Ireland, and that their disarmament action was reasonable, taking into consideration all the circumstances.