The family of Robert McCartney stormed out of court in disgust yesterday after the media learnt that the man accused of his killing had been cleared of murder before the judge delivered his verdict.

A Northern Ireland Courts’ Service official distributed full transcripts of the 74-page judgment to the dozens of reporters packed into Belfast Crown Court, fully 15 minutes before the judge arrived.

Within seconds, the reporters knew that one defendant, Terence Davison, 51, had been found not guilty of murdering 33-year-old Mr McCartney, a father of two, who had been beaten and stabbed outside Magennis’s bar near Belfast city centre on January 30, 2005.

As news filtered back to the packed public gallery where Mr McCartney’s family members were sitting, a sense of disbelief, frustration and anger filled the air.

They had faced years of intimidation, despair and frustration in the 3½years since Mr McCartney’s killing and this was the final insult for them.

As the judgment was delivered, four armed police officers stood at the back of the courtroom while other armed officers were positioned in corridors, at the court entrance and in the streets outside.

Mr Davison had denied murder and looked relaxed in the dock as the judge — who had been sitting without a jury during the month-long trial — delivered his judgment.

The killing of Mr McCartney had sparked worldwide interest over claims of IRA involvement and the subsequent offer by the organisation to have those responsible shot, an offer the McCartney family flatly refused to countenance.

Mr Justice Gillen said he had found the defendant not guilty of murder because he could not be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr Davison — who did not give evidence on his own behalf — was the killer.

Mr Davison’s co-accused James McCormick, 39, and Joseph Fitzpatrick, 47, were also found not guilty of affray. Mr Fitzpatrick was acquitted on a further charge of assault.

The judge said that he understood that the family of Mr McCartney would be “frustrated and disappointed” by his judgment, which he said reflected the rule of law.

Mr Justice Gillen said: “I recognise that the family of Mr McCartney and others who hold him dear will be frustrated and disappointed that whoever it was who cut this young man down in the prime of his life has — or have — not yet been brought to justice.

“However, the memory of Mr McCartney and the rule of law itself would be ill-served by this court failing to observe the high standards of criminal justice and the burden of proof which prevail in courts in Northern Ireland.”

Mr Justice Gillen said it had been clear that “acrimonious exchanges” had taken place between Mr McCartney and Mr Davison at Magennis’s bar on the night in question but he questioned the accuracy of the key prosecution evidence from Witness C — a woman who spoke from behind a screen to protect her anonymity.

The witness, a motorist who had been stopped at traffic lights outside the bar, was described by the judge as “a transparently honest and extremely couragous woman”.

However, the judge said that her failure to notice any weapon, the lack of blood on the pavement where she said the knife attack took place and inconsistencies in her recollection about what the defendant had been wearing and the length of his hair had led him to have “a gathering unease” about her evidence. Outlining a number of discrepancies between her initial statements to police and her evidence to the court, he concluded that “even the most honest, courageous and convincing of witnesses can be mistaken”.

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