I also think the jury decision ... more a response to the assailant's remorse for an action undertaken in the heat of the moment.
Plus they would have considered the devastation hsi imprisonment would have had on his family.
"The three men were tried at Portlaoise Circuit Court on Tuesday, March 4, 1986, before a Judge O'Higgins and charged with "causing malicious damage in a place of divine worship." The judge stated that he had to be "particularly zealous in guarding the rights of the three defendants" and dismissed the case on the grounds that the Ballinspittle grotto is not, in fact, a place of divine worship. To the defendants, of course, it was a place of sinful idolatry."
The jury heard all the evidence and convicted Mr Wilson of breach of the peace without the hate aggravation and found him not guilty of the charge of assault, which also contained a hate aggravation.
They are not for the jury to decide