Jeffrey Donaldson, described as one of Northern Ireland's most well-known politicians in recent decades, has been found guilty of a string of historical sex offences. Following the verdict, he was taken away from the courthouse in Newry in a prison van, bringing a dramatic moment to a case involving one of the region's most prominent public figures.
Inside the court, the jury methodically read out a guilty verdict to each of the charges he faced. According to the account from the courtroom, Donaldson then sat down as the judge moved on to deal with other matters connected to the case, after the panel had worked through the counts one by one.
The proceedings did not concern Donaldson alone. As the judge continued, attention turned to other matters in the case, including those relating to his wife, Eleanor Donaldson, who was also part of the legal process tied to the offences at the centre of the trial.
Eleanor Donaldson had previously been found unfit to face a conventional trial because of her mental state. As a result, her case could not proceed in the usual way, and the court adopted a different approach to determine her involvement in the matters before it.
Instead of a standard trial, she faced what is known in legal parlance as a trial of the facts. Under that process, which is not a conventional trial, the jury was not asked to weigh guilt in the ordinary sense but simply to decide whether she had carried out the acts in question.
The acts she was said to have committed, in this instance, were to aid and abet her husband's string of sexual offences. The trial of the facts therefore centred on whether she had played that role in relation to the offences for which Jeffrey Donaldson has now been found guilty.
The guilty verdict and the sight of Donaldson being driven away in a prison van marked the conclusion of a closely followed case in Newry. For a figure who had stood among the most recognisable names in Northern Ireland politics over recent decades, the outcome represents a striking fall from public life.