Category: Court Reporting (Page 5 of 18)

The Baser Appetites

2nd June 2010 / Abigail / 0 Comments

I watch the search terms people use to arrive at this blog with interest. Every blogger gets some weird ones but I get more than most. It kind of goes with the territory when you spend most of your time writing about murder, rape, abuse, death and the media.

I write on a fairly niche subject so I end up high in the results for searches for Irish legal or criminal matters. There’s a couple of weird ones – I get a LOT of hits from Japan for naked caricatures since I posted on the paintings of our esteemed Taoiseach in the nip that appeared in a couple of galleries in Dublin a while back using a full frontal image from Galway cartoonist Allan Cavanagh. And recently I seem to have become a go to place for those looking for the recipe for ricin (though since I’ve written extensively on that very subject I brought that one on myself).

Today I got an unusual one, a sentence that took me aback when I read it in the list of Google searches. Someone had found my blog looking for the phrase “Abigail Rieley is scum”. I know that people sometimes have very strong views about what I write here and that’s why I have comments enabled on every post. Blogging is a social form of writing and I believe people should have the freedom to express their views. I won’t allow comments that will cause unnecessary offence or break the law but if someone has a rational case to make they can make it freely.

But it got me thinking. I write, for the most part, about death. I earn my living following the stories of some of the most violent deaths we have in this country and I comment on them. I’m aware that I can’t please everyone if I come down on one side or another in a trial but I will always try to be as fair as I possibly can. But however fair I am there is always the risk of upsetting someone.

That’s the problem with this line of work. As a court reporter specialising in criminal trials I am feeding one of the oldest appetites for news. It’s the same public hunger that demands public executions and fights to the death for sport. It’s the side of humanity that watches the pain of others with a bright glint in the eye. Before you recoil in disgust stop a minute – it’s a lot more common than you think.

It’s the same side of us that laps up crime fiction and violent movies. Just because it’s make believe doesn’t mean it’s a different urge. It’s the same sneering little voice that laughs at the audition stages of Britain’s Got Talent, willing dreams to be dashed and hopes crushed and will continue to watch even though psychologist have warned of the dangers to the more vulnerable auditionees. But what I write about doesn’t have the sanitised gloss of entertainment. It’s real life, real death. The raw explosion of emotion that leads one ordinary person to take another’s life. You realise very quickly when you work down in the courts that the average person on trial for murder is not a psychopath or evil or depraved. They’re just like you and me.

With every trial there are people who have lost, families who must listen to their loved ones reduced to an echo, a cipher who was at the centre of a storm and is now in front of the court as a a series of figments; forensic samples, perhaps a few photographs taken after death and the inevitable post mortem. It’s shocking in it’s mundanity.

I’ve seen the looks the family of both the accused and the deceased give us journalists as we file in to the front of the court. We’re usually seen as vultures, vermin scrabbling for the juicy titbits left over from a tragedy. I know how it looks, we all do. But the reality of the situation is that we are there to do a job and to feed an appetite for this kind of news. It’s easier to cover a trial when you aren’t emotionally involved and that distance tends to show itself as an increased cynicism and an outward callousness. We’re there to tell a story and allow the audience that same remove. We’re feeding an interest, crime and politics have been filling newspapers since they were just a bill pasted on a wall…at least we don’t write ballads about the more infamous trials these days.

I would argue though that court reporting’s not all base emotions. We’re witness to the carrying out of justice, one of the basic pillars of society. Without the courts we’d have anarchy, or something similar. When we write about murders we’re giving a voice to the dead and seeing their killers brought to justice – most of the time. Maybe the reason why there’s such an interest in crime stories is just that, because it puts the bad guys in their place and makes the world less scary. There will always be those that just see the sleaze and think what I do is sordid and perhaps even exploitative but all I can do is try to show them otherwise.

An Issue of Privacy

1st June 2010 / Abigail / 0 Comments

The big legal story of the day is definitely the action being taken by convicted serial rapist Michael Murray to safeguard his privacy.

49-year-old Murray, who raped four women in a six day period in 1995, says he has been hounded by the press since his release from prison last year. He says he can’t take part in any meaningful rehabilitation programme when there are snappers hiding in the bushes wherever he goes and can’t even stay living in the same place. They say the public has the right to know where a serial sex offender is living.

Today was only the first day of the case so there’ll be a long wait to see what the court rules. It’ll be a judgement that anyone who covers the courts or crime will be watching with interest. Crime stories are big news in Ireland. Covering the big trials over the past few years I’ve grown used to seeing scrums outside the court after a verdict that would rival those usually reserved for Hollywood stars. Certainly a lot of the more paparazzi shots that appear in the papers are to do with crime lords rather than movie stars.

I’d be out of work if that interest wasn’t there but when it comes to privacy there’s a whole different can of worms. When photographers chase musicians or actresses they’re chasing people who signed up for the chase. Sudden celebrity might come as a shock but if you do something that requires you to perform in front of (hopefully) large crowds it kind of goes with the territory.

Those who commit crimes don’t tend to do it for an audience. They might crave some form of notoriety through their actions but it’s not really the same thing. Yet once they’ve been identified and especially once they’ve been caught and tried, they become a rather magnetic news story. This newsworthiness isn’t something that will fade with their looks. Once they’re convicted they are indelibly linked to their crime. If the crime was awful, tragic or extravagant then public interest in it will remain and so will journalistic interest.

Take Wayne O’Donoghue for example. Convicted in 2006 to four years for the manslaughter of his 11-year-old neighbour Robert Holohan, O’Donoghue was released from prison in February 2008 after serving three years. It had been a trial that hit all the front pages and passed into legal history when his mother Majella made certain allegations in her victim impact statement. Because of these comments this is a trial that tends to be raised any time there’s a discussion about victim impact statements and it remains fresh in the public mind.

Wayne O’Donoghue left the country after his release but as recently as this January the Sunday World ran a story about his new girlfriend. Joe O’Reilly’s girlfriend Nicki Pelley has been a regular tabloid fixture, photographed every now and then because she stuck by the man who was convicted of the brutal murder of his wife Rachel.

As long as the names of those convicted sell papers when they appear on the front page the press will keep their interest. That’s how newspapers work. When Sharon Collins, the subject of my first book Devil in the Red Dress, is released from jail the photographers will be waiting to see if her proposed victim PJ Howard is waiting to whisk her off to some Spanish villa. When Eamonn Lillis (subject of the latest book) has served his time there’ll be those wanting to see what he does next. There’ll probably also be those who are curious to see whether his former mistress Jean Treacy gets the Italian wedding she was planning while she was cheating on her fiancé with Lillis. The list goes on and on.

This is the nature of news. If something’s a story it’s a story. It might not be pleasant for those caught in the crosshairs but that’s the way it works. It may seem sordid or even rather repellent but these stories have been filling newspapers as long as there have been newspapers. But however you feel about the examples I’ve given what about those who have committed the really, really bad stuff…like Michael Murray, who raped four women in less than a week and whose own counsel describes as an “abnormal risk to the community”?

He served time for his crimes, his debt to society as decided by the courts. Is he entitled to privacy? A quick Google throws up some of the stories that obviously caused offence, stories of day trips to Bray, security alerts. When you look at the results Google throws up it certain gives the impression that he has had very little time since his release when he wasn’t being watched by a press posse. He’s not the first to receive this treatment but depending on the outcome of this case he could be one of the last.

These are the stories that lead to calls for a sex offenders register, for the public to have more, not less information about who lives close to them. But privacy is the right of every individual and that causes a problem. It’s going to be very interesting indeed to see how the Michael Murray case works out. I’m sure it won’t be the last time I post on the subject.

Web Savvy Jurors a Threat to Justice?

20th May 2010 / Abigail / 0 Comments

Earlier this week the Independent reported that a High Court judge warned about the risks of jurors googling background on a trial they were involved in or even an accused. It’s an issue that goes right to the core of the Irish justice system. We have a system here where an accused person is given the absolute presumption of innocence. As a journalist covering the courts it’s something that I have to take into account every working day.

It’s this presumption that means those accused of a crime are on bail before they are sentenced (unless they are considered too much of a flight risk or are serving time for another crime). If they are on remand it’s that reason that photographers must crop their shots so that prison guards and handcuffs are not shown. When we write colour on a trial we have to avoid using inflammatory adjectives to describe the accused, they can’t watch something slyly or have a hooded brow for example. It doesn’t matter if the only reason we’re there to cover a trial is because of whatever crime the accused has previously committed, as far as reporting it concerned he or she is as innocent as the driven snow until the twelve in the jury box decide otherwise.

This is where the Internet posses a problem. Once something is written in cyber space it’s frozen in time. It’s possible to take down content that would be prejudicial in a fresh trial but it’s almost impossible to police the on line chatter that accompanies almost any high profile trial. A bit of judicious googling can unearth all sorts of dirt on almost anyone these days. If you’ve broken the law in a sufficiently interesting manner to make the papers then the record of your crime will hang around for all to see. It’s where journalists find a lot of background but we’re not the only ones with the pass to the net. Anyone can do it and there isn’t really any way of stopping someone of doing it if they’re serving on a jury.

Now judges might not have to warn juries about the perils of the Internet but I can think of at least two trials off hand where the jury was told each night not to Google at the same time they were told not to read the newspaper or broadcast coverage of the trial. That’s really all a judge can practically do but it begs to be seen whether that will remain to be enough. The jury trial is a funny thing. I can’t think of a fairer alternative than having your fate decided by twelve of your peers but it’s never just that simple. Juries come back with bizarre decisions sometimes, or they’ve obviously not misunderstood some aspect of the trial or the charge but in the end what alternative is there?

We put an awful lot of responsibilities on juries. For so many people it’s just time away from work and an intrusion into the smooth routine of life but it’s vital. Civilian juries are used precisely because they don’t have all the baggage and assumptions that a jury of legal bods would have. If you watch too many trials the cynicism starts to eat away at you and that presumption of innocence is a far harder thing to accept. Of course judges every day rule objectively on all kinds of things but criminal justice in particular isn’t a matter of academic point scoring. We have juries partly to bring their humanity to proceedings. But that means we also have to trust them to play by the rules and observe the rules of their job.

This is one of those issues that exists in the hinterland between the man of the street juror and the legal tomes of the barrister. It’s human nature to peek where you’re not supposed to and I’m would be more surprised if jurors didn’t have a quick look on line. The tendency to gossip is assumed by the law. It’s the reason why the judge who swears in the juries on a Monday asks the jury panel if they have any connection with any of the places connected to a case. We assume they fess up if they do just as we assume they will be honour bound not to go online as soon as they get back from a day in court.

And that’s the thing. When you talk to people who’ve served on juries the one thing they all say is that they felt the need to do the right thing. They took their responsibility seriously. Now maybe I just have a particularly dutiful bunch of friends but it would seem to be fairly safe to assume that every jury will have at least someone who’s taking it seriously. You only have to watch the jury during a judge’s charge, when they realise that the ball is very nearly in their court and they will have to make a decision that will affect another human being’s life, to see that the majority do take it very seriously indeed. Juries are frequently discharged because someone admits talking to someone they shouldn’t or reading something they shouldn’t or even playing hurling with one of the gardai involved in the case. These things happen a lot. Surely that proves that jurors have enough sense to know what they should do and to put their hands up when it’s not done?

There will always be dodgy stuff on the net and it’s not necessarily the stuff blurted out on message boards. When a guilty verdict has been passed the media are fully within their rights to carry all the details they’ve been sitting on during the trial. All the sly looks and handcuffs and previous convictions. And once this stuff is out there, it’s out there. With regards to juries there seem to be only two choices. Either trust that they will do what they are supposed to and avoid googling the names of the accused or perhaps the victim, or sequester them for the course of the trial to make sure they restrain themselves.

The law has changed several times regarding sequestering. Juries are no longer required to stay together from the moment they have been sworn and for more than a year they are not even required to stay together once they have started their deliberations. The law changed recently to allow jurors to go home to their families each night. The court is trusting them not to discuss with husbands and wives and mothers and fathers and children and siblings and friends the often disturbing things they have heard during the day. We expect them not to unburden themselves to those they love because it’s the right thing to do. Surely that’s a harder prohibition than simply avoiding checking something? Surely if they can be trusted not to do one thing they can be trusted not to do the other?

The law is going to have to look at all the technological changes that have come into our lives in recent years. This is only one area that will require a cool, clinical eye turned over it to make a decision that’s not a knee jerk reaction from people who don’t really understand the modern ever connected world we live in but that’s an informed response to issues and problems that simply haven’t existed before now. It’ll be interesting to watch.

Postscript to a Brutal Story

19th May 2010 / Abigail / 0 Comments

Sean Keogh was sentenced to four years in jail today. He was convicted earlier this month for his part in the murders of Polish men Pawel Kalite and Marius Szwajkos in Drimnagh in February 2008. His co-accused in that trial, 19-year-old David Curran, is already serving a life sentence for the murders. Curran was the one who wielded the screwdriver that left both men brain dead within seconds.

Throughout the trial it was obvious that Keogh was very much the afterthought in this trial. His part in the attack was really little more than a henchman and it wasn’t until the very end of the trial when the DPP dramatically introduced a new charge of assault which Keogh instantly pleaded guilty to. He had admitted himself that he had kicked Pawel Kalite in the head and face as he lay on the pavement outside his house, fatally wounded.

Whenever there’s a co-accused whose part in proceedings is relatively cut and dried they will always appear to be something of an after thought in the trial. It was the same with Essam Eid during the Devil trial. It was always Sharon Collins’ legal team who stood up to fight every legal challenge. She had a lot more to fight for. Eid had been caught red handed. So in this trial Curran was the one who had been seen with the screwdriver. He was the one who had done the deed. Even when he was charged with murder Keogh was never really cast as anything more than a tagger on, a follower, nothing more than a henchman to Curran’s brutal villain.

Fighting a murder charge on “common design” or “joint enterprise”; the legislation that allows the get away driver to be charged with robbery even if he never set foot in the bank, is always a tricky one. In the case of Keogh it was certainly a tricky one to convince a jury on. And in the end they weren’t convinced.

It emerged today that Keogh had a much longer record than Curran. Keogh had been a regular of the children’s courts and the circuit and district courts, racking up 75 previous convictions. They weren’t major crimes, mainly the kinds of charges you hear for a habitual joy rider. He’s someone who’s drifted from one misdemeanour to another until his out of control path led him into real trouble. This was a trial that shone a spotlight on the lives of some teenagers in sink estates all over, brutal, senseless and frequently brief. A life filled with drink, drugs and petty crime with little or no respect for life, their own or others. A depressing view but an all too common one in the daily business of the criminal courts.

Sean Keogh kicked the head of a dying man – hard enough to break his teeth – yet it’s all too easy to dismiss him as the hapless henchman. His crime is after all one of assault, not of murder. But the sheer, depressing brutality of this case is going to stick. Even if it’s a horribly familiar tale.

Ricin in the News Again

18th May 2010 / Abigail / 0 Comments

Lat week in the UK a father and son were jailed on terrorist charges. They were by all accounts a nasty pair – neo nazi thugs who planned to overthrow the Government. But what made me pause as I was flicking through the news headlines was the method they had decided to wreak havoc with…that favourite of extremists and conspiracy theorists…Saddam Hussein’s biological weapon of choice…the third most lethal toxin known to man…RICIN.

I know more than I would ever wish to about this particular poison thanks to the research I did when I was writing Devil in the Red Dress. The toxin had formed a crucial part of the prosecution case against both Sharon Collins & Essam Eid, it was the one thing that raised Eid’s involvement to more than a rather unsuccessful con artist. In the summer of 2008 we spent days in a rather stuffy courtroom in the Four Courts listening to the details of how ricin was found in Eid’s cell in Limerick prison and how the army were scrambled into action and the services of an elite lab in the UK were drafted in to test the microscopic traces found in a contact lens case under Eid’s bed.

It was only when I started researching the book that I realised what a thorny issue ricin is. Ever since UN weapons inspectors found that Saddam Hussein had been stockpiling the stuff it’s been popping up in newspaper headlines with an infamy it hasn’t enjoyed since it was used to off Bulgarian writer Georgi Markov in a memorable piece of cold war skulduggery. The assassination using a rigged umbrella as Markov was crossing Waterloo Bridge has passed into the popular consciousness and has appeared in countless spy movies over the years. What people don’t tend to remember is that another Bulgarian dissident was attacked at around the same time and lived. Ricin has it’s problems as a method of assassination and hasn’t been used as often as you might think.

This hasn’t stopped the countless ricin recipes from cropping up on the Internet. They would have you believe that the production of ricin is nothing more than a simple home chemistry experiment, barely more complicated than the old adding a mint to a bottle of cola to cause a plume of fizz several feet high (and don’t try that one at home children, it might not be life threatening but it certainly makes a hell of a mess). It’s the ease of production that makes ricin so attractive to your average nut. There aren’t many chemical weapons you can cook up in your kitchen after all. That’s certainly what Essam Eid thought when he cooked it up using a coffee filter and a blender in his Las Vegas kitchen and it seems that’s what appealed to Ian and Nicky Davidson when they were looking for something to get rid of “Zionist” politicians.

But it’s not as simple as that. This is one of those cases where what you find on the Internet might not be what it appears. Certainly the most common recipe, the one that appears on most of the right wing forums (like I said, been places researching that book that would turn your stomach – I’m sure I’m on some form of security watch list at this stage (if I am then – Hello Boys, do say Hi sometime.) I ended up spending way too long on the ricin research portion of the book. Not because I found it overly fascinating but because it’s so difficult to find straight answers and I’m not a bio chemist. You see the most common recipe was actually written by a fifteen year old. You can tell by the spelling and the confusion about basic chemistry. I’m not going start linking to the recipes, before you start wondering. I’ll get to the why later.

Now this first recipe that I’m talking about goes back to the newsgroups in the early days of the Internet. It doesn’t make ricin. At best it makes castor bean mash (castor beans are the main ingredient in ricin recipes – even the ones that actually work). Castor bean mash has been used as a fertiliser by American farmers since the 1950s. It contains about 2% ricin, slightly more than the beans do in their natural state.

Then there’s the so-called Al Qaeda recipe which has cropped up in another high profile terror trial. Except in that ricin trial there actually wasn’t any ricin. There is a recipe floating around on line that is supposedly written by Muslim extremists but this also doesn’t actually make ricin, at least not the kind of pure stuff that you’d need for chemical weapon purposes or any other purposes. It makes a good fertiliser though.

Ricin is arguably the big bad wolf of the Internet. Recipes are easy to find but don’t deliver what they claim. The press and the authorities will periodically lament the ease with which such a deadly toxin can be made and the nutcases take notes and get onto Google. Don’t get me wrong, ricin is a very nasty substance indeed. If it kills you it will do so almost cell by cell and the death it brings will be truly agonising. It’s one of the three most deadly toxins known and is more deadly gram for gram than anthrax or arsenic. But as a murder weapon it’s less than impressive, which is probably why Markov has the distinction of being the only high profile, provable ricin assassination. Ricin is also a pretty lousy weapon of mass destruction. There are all kinds of problems with getting it out there, although apparently Saddam had his weapons guys working on that one.

What ricin does have is the instant fear factor. It doesn’t matter that the vast majority of cases that come to light were making use of these bogus recipes or that the white powder they had made was once again little more than fertiliser. I’m being deliberately vague in this post. The recipes I’m not going near because despite their uselessness there are still deluded souls out there who cook them up with murderous intent and I cover trials, I don’t want to end up as evidence in one. I’m also not going into detail to back up my argument because – well – it’s all in the book, there’s a whole chapter on this and I’ve no wish to repeat myself.

But seeing a trial like the Davidson one brings home the draw this stuff has and how many people believe it really is that easy to make. It was almost impossible when I was doing the research to get anyone official to talk dispassionately about the whole ricin thing. I understand why. It is a scary substance and there’s always the chance that someone, somewhere will one day make it right. And as long as they’re cooking up ricin they’re not making something that actually kills. For all the times ricin has appeared in the news over the past few years it’s always been because the means of making it was found never because it’s killed anyone. But it’s always irritated me that this wooliness exists.

It might not matter in the long run whether the nuts cooking up castor beans in their kitchens are on a hiding to nothing, what probably matters in the end is that they think they are making one of the most deadly poisons known to man and they intend to use it. But I can’t help thinking that it should be reported right and the media at least shouldn’t just accept the deadliness of the white powder in a case. You very seldom see the actual percentage of ricin in a sample made public, if it was ever tested for in the first place. Most tests check for the existence of ricin, which you will have if you have castor beans. What would be more useful is if they had the percentage of ricin. Then you could tell if the guy in the dock was just a rather dumb crackpot or someone really dangerous. But then, the guy in the dock is usually the dumb guy, the one whose plan had the fatal flaw that led to his capture. The really clever ones don’t tend to end up in the dock.

Back to the Subject of Sentencing

12th May 2010 / Abigail / 2 Comments

The subject of sentencing seems to be in the air this week. I was reading an interesting post from Hazel Larkin this morning within minutes of reading two letters (here and here) in today’s Irish Independent and it got me thinking.

It’s very easy to get upset about some of the sentences handed down in Irish courts. When you see rapists routinely sentenced to ten years or less, as in the particularly brutal case from Clare that was sentenced yesterday, it can be hard to see how the punishment fits the crime. But blaming the judges, as the letters to the Indo did today isn’t the answer. It’s a far more complicated situation than that and the judges are the least of the problem.

I’ve been covering the courts for more than four years, I’ve written on sentencing here on several occasions but it’s a subject that is just going to run and run. It can be very hard to fathom how a rapist, whose crime is deemed serious enough for the highest criminal court, the Central, is frequently handed a lower sentence than someone convicted of a drugs crime in the lower Circuit Courts. This isn’t because Central Criminal Court judges are softer than their Circuit Court counterparts, it’s the way the law is constructed.

There exists in Irish law a presumption of degrees. For example, if someone is convicted of possession of drugs worth more than €13,000, with the presumption that he has them for sale or supply, he must serve a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years. This is all very well. If you take the drugs of the streets you might end up saving lives – or they could end up with the dubious delights of the Head Shop and you as government are left with another hole to plug.

The minimum sentence is all very well in principal, if you assume that everyone caught with vast quantities of drugs is a nasty predatory drug dealer but those guys very seldom seem to end up in court. What you see instead are the pawns, the hopeless drug addicts whose debt has climbed too high or the hapless third world dupes who see a better future for their families with the proceeds of acting as a drug mule. I’ve seen plenty of people who were as much victims of the drugs as the end users but all were sentenced to a mandatory ten year turn.

Then you have the rape cases. Cases as I’ve said which are tried in the highest criminal court, it’s put up there with murder. Yet there is no minimum sentence for rape. A grown man who forces himself on a woman or, in some cases, on a young child, can walk away after three or four years. Even if that attack goes hand in hand with false imprisonment, violent assault or psychological manipulation and entrapment. I’ve seen a lot of incest cases where the now adult victim has had to endure years of systematic abuse then relived it on the stand only to see their abuser sentenced for one or two years because he’s now an old man.

It doesn’t seem fair that drugs are deemed worse than sexual crimes. After all there aren’t that many people who take drugs who are forced to take them against their will, who are threatened and terrorised until they snort that cocaine or whatever. I’m not belittling those ravaged by addiction just making the point that those who are raped are never in a situation where they asked for it and very often are never in a situation where they can walk away. It’s not something that abstention will wipe away and it’s never, ever sought for a rush. Fine, drugs wreck lives. But rape destroys them. If there’s a minimum of ten years for some drugs offences shouldn’t there be a minimum for sex offences?

I’ve sat through a lot of both kinds of trials and I’m well aware that there are differences in degree, just as there are different kinds of killings but I can’t help but agree with those who say that for Central Criminal Court crimes the minimum sentences do not match the crimes. There are many reasons why the sentences for rape or manslaughter are the length they are. Judges have a complex way of arriving at their sentences. There’s the range of imprisonment for the crime in hand, then the mitigating factors that must reduce that term, with the sole exception of murder which earns a mandatory life sentence.

If the judge, who has sat through the entire trial, feels that a stiffer sentence than usual is fitting he must still bear in mind the Court of Criminal Appeal which has frequently overturned the longer sentences.

Each rape trial is different just as each murder trial and each manslaughter trial is different and it’s right that there is flexibility in sentencing but surely a violent rape should be classed the same as a murder if we’re going to be serious about prison being a deterrent. There are of course other factors in play as well, including the obligatory one quarter off their sentence that the convicted receive as a matter of course. It was an nice idea, a carrot rather than a stick to ensure good behaviour but when those being jailed are guilty of some of the most heinous crimes committed in the country surely there should be a mechanism to remove the carrot?

I remember the sentencing of Gerald Barry for rape last year. Barry had been convicted of the murder of Swiss student Manuela Riedo in March last year but it was only a couple of months later in July when a few of us gathered in Galway to hear Mr Justice Paul Carney sentence him for two ground of rape. Barry had raped a French student just weeks before he killed Manuela in a hauntingly similar attack. Judge Carney handed down two life sentences. He said then that he did not think the time off should come into force for men like Barry. He’s a judge who’s frequently outspoken. But the wheels of justice move exceedingly slowly and many of the things he’s spoken out about are still very much in force.

I can also remember a sentencing for a very nasty case of child abuse where the judge had wanted to hand down consecutive sentences, which given the multiple counts, would have added up to more than 100 years. Sadly there are strict rules governing whether sentences should be consecutive or concurrent (that is whether they run one after the other or at the same time) which means that consecutive sentences are a rarity, no matter how vicious the crime. It’s these same rules that mean that David Curran will effectively serve one life sentence even though he killed both Pawel Kalite and Marius Szwajkos.

There definitely needs to be reform of the sentencing for certain crimes in Irish courts. But from what I’ve seen it’s rarely the judges who operate from the coalface who are most at fault, it’s the appeal judges who base their decisions on a transcript or the politicians who pass the laws. There’s a reason why the crimes that tend to be highlighted on the voters doorsteps or those that make the headlines – gangs and drugs principally – are the ones that get the draconian measures. It’s time that someone who wasn’t after votes looked at the law and made the changes that could make Irish law as fair as it has the potential to be. This is by and large a great system, but it’s things like this that make people think it can’t be trusted.

When Children Kill

10th May 2010 / Abigail / 0 Comments

One of the most shocking things about the Drimnagh murder trial was the youth of the person accused of a savage, brutal attack that left two innocent men dead in seconds. David Curran was only 17 when he murdered Pawel Kalite and Marius Szwajkos, too young to be named in the initial reports of his arrest.

He young enough to still be a young man when he’s released from his life sentence and when that verdict was handed down, as I’ve already mentioned here, he looked a lot younger than his now 19 years. When I first started to cover the trial, in the second week, I initially thought, just based on the faces of the two accused sitting in front of me, that Curran was the one accused of the lesser crime of joint enterprise.

I’ve sat near a fair number of killers over the past few years and it’s still surprising how ordinary those convicted of killing another human being tend to look but when the killer is still little more than a child it’s all the more shocking.

I’ve written at length here about Finn Colclough, who was 17 when he fatally stabbed 18-year-old Sean Nolan while Sean was out celebrating the end of secondary school. Colclough was convicted of manslaughter not murder and earlier this year the Court of Criminal Appeal reduced his 10 year sentence by suspending the last two years of it. It was a trial that provoked a vocal reaction from those who observed it. There was, and I think still is, a perception that justice was not served in some way because Colclough came from a well off family and lived on the exclusive Waterloo Road in Dublin 4.

I’ve always said that manslaughter was the correct verdict in that trial and I haven’t changed my mind. But after the Drimnagh trial I can’t help comparing Finn Colclough and David Curran. Both had been mixing their drinks and both had smoked cannabis. Both could perhaps have done with considerably more parental supervision and both took an action in the heat of the moment that resulted in an innocent man’s death.

There are, of course, several key differences that go a long way to explaining the different sentences. Sean Nolan died from two stab wounds that, according the the pathologist, were consistent with the knives still being held while Colclough tried to push Sean away from him in a struggle. Pawel Kalite and Marius Szwajkos died from almost identical wounds to the temple, caused by a screwdriver wielded at head height. Curran’s attack showed a devastating aggression that obviously left the jury in no doubt that his actions were murder not manslaughter.

But you can’t help playing “What If” with the two cases. What if Curran had come from Waterloo Road not Drimnagh. It’s unlikely he would have spent his days robbing and getting out of his head on benzodiazepines but what’s to say he wouldn’t have still been binge drinking and getting stoned on joints. He might not have left school so abruptly at the age of 15.

Colclough had managed to stay in school, despite crippling OCD and ADHD when he was younger, because of the intervention of his parents. If Colclough had been born in Drimnagh rather than the Waterloo Road would his crime still have been manslaughter? Would he have acted the same and would the jury have reacted the same?

I’ve commented before on the similarities between cases but I suppose this time I’m more interested in the differences. Both were 17 when they took a life and both looked startlingly young and vulnerable in court. But Colclough faced his trial with his parents sitting with him in the court while Curran faced the verdict alone. Curran did a horrible, grotesque and brutal thing and took two lives for no reason but because of where he’s from, the life he was living, we assume he is a feral monster, a simmering time bomb waiting to provide a cautionary tale of youth gone wild. If he had been born into more affluent surroundings I wonder would the jury have found his defence teams explanation of the mind warping effects of benzodiazepines and alcohol more palatable.

The verdicts were what they were and the facts of the two cases stand but it’s interesting to compare the two trials. I’ve received a lot of criticism on this blog for showing any compassion for Colclough but I notice that hasn’t been the case so far with Curran. Considering he is guilty of the worse crime I think that’s interesting. I’m not coming to any conclusions on this just asking some question that might not even have answers. But I know that whenever I cover the trial of someone so young I start to wonder…what if.

Tools of the Trade

9th May 2010 / Abigail / 1 Comment

Today I’m writing in praise of fountain pens. It might sound a rather perverse eulogy about an irrelevant luxury but my fascination has a far more practical root. I use them every day and they’re as much a part of my kit as my laptop and my shorthand notebook.

I’ve used fountain pens pretty much all my life. I went to one of those schools where they were considered to have magical properties developing the handwriting of small children. If we used our fountain pens (cheap plastic Stypens with washable blue ink and only that) our handwriting would exhibit such exquisite regularity and grace that anyone reading it would be totally at our mercy…or something.

I bought into the hype but as a lefthander I had to endure years of ink stains and smudged pages with no sign of this miraculous calligraphy we had been promised. I got the hang of it eventually though and could write pages at a time where the nib didn’t gouge a hole in the paper or the ink sputter little blue raindrops all over my science homework. I actually got to like the feeling of the nib gliding across the page and my hand never cramped with a fountain pen the way it would with those evil scratchy biros that were the only cheap option before the advent of gel pens.

One of the first things I bought when I left home was a proper grown up fountain pen, a black and gold affair to replace the sugar pink Waterman I had been using up till then. When I got my first job as a journalist I went out and got a grown up Waterman for more money than I’d even spent on a pair of shoes. But as I got into the job the pen ended up sidelined for anything other than a brief note or my signature. I started typing everything and my speeds increased until the words seemed to magically appear on the page almost as fast as I had thought them. The only time the pen got taken out of it’s leather case was to write Christmas cards and each year I noticed how far my handwriting was slipping from the graceful loops we were taught to aspire to in school.

But there are times when the clack clatter of the keyboard seems a little bit too aggressive. Those times when an idea is taking its time in forming and the blinking of the cursor becomes a blink of accusation that taps out it’s taunts in a staccato rhythm. When there’s no deadline looming and there’s time to indulge such thoughts something a little more sensuous is in order.

I recently went on a bit of a quest to find a pen that I could write with as smoothly as I can type. Something that would glide over the page so smoothly and sit in my hand so neatly it was just an extension of my arm. A pen that would allow the hand to form the curves of the word and smoothly as the fingers tap out the qwerty code to put thoughts on the page.

The magical pen is apparently an Esterbrook.

These little pens were the Volkswagen Beetle of the pen world, manufactured in their millions by the American company Esterbrook from around the Second World war. They’re so common they can be found cheaply on EBay and they clean up to look as if they were made yesterday.

I use an SJ, like the green pen in the advert, smaller and thinner than the standard J model. It was made sometime in the 1950s. It’s light and sits perfectly in the crook of my hand. But the best thing is the nib. You can change the nib on an Estie and the choice of alternatives is vast. I can get a nib designed for shorthand or one that will give my writing the look of a thin ribbon on the page as the line widens and contracts according to the direction of the stroke.

But the best thing about using a vintage pen is the history. I have no idea who owned my little pens before me; whether it was the pen of a school child trying to master that elegant penmanship I could never get the hang of in school; or maybe a secretary whose shorthand would surely have put mine to shame as she took dictation in a Mad Men pencil skirt and figure hugging sweater. Maybe it belonged to a writer or a journalist doing what I do long before I was born.

Using a pen like that makes a blank page an invitation not a challenge and these days my handwriting’s no longer looking like it was the work of a drunken spider. It can coax out tentative ideas when the clock’s not ticking and best of all does not need a nearby power supply like my laptop. I’ve some time between trials and I’m looking forward to blocking out some new ideas with my little pens. Most of the time the tools of my trade are the latest gadgets, netbooks, flash drive recorders, social networking and all that jazz. Sometimes it’s nice to get back to basics. It really is a nicer way to work.

Snapshots of a life

7th May 2010 / Abigail / 0 Comments

The thing about murder trials, one of the things anyway, is that you only see fragments of the story. The trial is a narrative all right, but one of a moment in time. An extraordinary, brutal event that gets picked over in minute detail, so the picture we get of both the accused and, often more so, the deceased is how they are frozen, in that moment of time.

It’s logical it should be like that of course. We are watching a dissection of that moment as the prosecution make their case but if you are writing about the story of the trial you are frequently left with very two dimensional main characters. Very often the deceased are the biggest mystery of all. They are the centre of proceedings but only as an abstract, an idea, maybe even a catalyst. They frequently have very little part in the story of their death while their killer, or those accused of that, sit in full view for us to scrutinise every twitch and glance.

It is the accused that we hear about as the prosecution seek to prove they are capable of the act they are accused of and the defence try to prove they’re not.

Yesterday I wrote about one of those fragments of insight, today I’ll write about another. Today we gathered to hear the victim impact statements written by the families of Pawel Kalite and Marius Szwajkos. Throughout the trial of David Curran and Sean Keogh, accused of their brutal killings, the Polish men have been little more than cyphers.

We have heard that they might both have been drinking vodka in the privacy of their bedrooms that Saturday evening in February 2008. We have heard that Pawel was incensed by being attacked by a pack of teenagers and had pulled on heavy boots before going out in anger.

Today we had the first inkling that the picture painted might have been distorted by what was to follow. The former boss of both men, Alan Kennedy, stood up to read the victim impact statements on behalf of the families. Before he started he addressed the court. It might interest us to know, he said, that it was a Polish custom to take off the shoes as soon as you entered the house. A simple statement, something he had learnt as he became closer to the families in the wake of the tragedy but one that had an obvious weight to those listening to him.

The implication was that Pawel had not been pulling on heavy boots to go and fight but simply outdoor footwear as he prepared to leave the house. The proximity to the violence of his death had given it an ominous edge that it should never had said. He read the statements with a catch in his voice, describing 29-year-old Pawel, who we had been told had been on his way to tangle with the teens who had cheeked him, when he met his death.

Pawel wasn’t like that, said his family. He was gentle, kind and sensible. Growing up from a small and sickly child with a smiling face to a man in love, who had called his aunt the day he died to arrange a trip to research house loans. He had met the woman he wanted to marry and wanted to move back to Poland to be with her.

He had loved his job and his life in Ireland and had been working on his English, travelling around the country to soak up the Irish culture. His savage death was like a screwdriver to the heart, they said, a wound that would never heal.

Marius’s family remembered the 27-year-old graduate with a masters degree in Mechanical Engineering who had rebuilt a 30 year old Volkswagen Beetle from a shell and made his sister handmade leather bags. His sister wrote about the time he had rebuilt another car for his father and how she still expected to hear his voice on the phone.

She quoted a Polish poem “Let us hurry to love people, they leave us too soon.”

Curran listened to both statements with his characteristic fast rocking. He seemed a little harder this morning, mouthing angrily at his family, who had been absent when he learnt his fate, telling them to “fuck off”. The frightened child of yesterday was gone in that moment. He’ll be fixed in the public consciousness from now on as an irredeemable monster. He sealed that fate for himself as soon as he swung that screwdriver but it’s always depressing to see a life wasted so totally so young. Now those he killed have been fleshed out as the restrictions of the justice system have been played out, he will always be that monster.

The Kalite family and the Szwajkos family will have to come to terms with their loss, it can never be undone. At least now they can redress the balance and flesh out the memory of the men they knew.

It’s always the same with murder. In the aftermath of the crime, when any suspects are still being investigated and arrests are yet to be made, it is only the victim. It is they who build the tragedy to it’s greatest heights as the media seek to show the light that’s just been extinguished. By the time we get to the trial though the accused is the focus and the victim fades into a fragmented part of the story.

It was particularly noticeable in the last trial I covered, that of Eamonn Lillis who was convicted back in February of the manslaughter of his wife Celine Cawley. During the trial Celine, who he had hit over the head with a brick, was painted as a shrieking harpy as the defence painted a picture of the lapdog who eventually snapped and bit the hand that fed him. It was only after the verdict, once again with a victim impact statement, that another side to her character was shown and the court caricature became a flesh and blood woman who was loved and missed by her family.

It’s the nature of the criminal trial and really can’t be helped but it must be so hard for victims families, sitting and listening not only to the forensic details that reduce a living person to a bundle of medical data, but also to what would amount to a character assassination in any other circumstances.

Sometimes Even the Guilty Deserve a Moment of Pity

6th May 2010 / Abigail / 7 Comments

David Curran sat beside his co accused, his eyes darting around the rapidly filling courtroom. It was shortly before 3 o’clock and the jury had a verdict. Beside him, Sean Keogh got hugs from his mother and his grandmother, but Curran could not find a friendly face.

We had been told, when the jury went out after lunch with the news that they could now come to a majority verdict, that Judge Liam McKechnie was not intending to call them back until at least 4.30. Curran’s supporters, few though they were, had gone off secure in the knowledge that justice would be a long time coming. It was already the second day of waiting.

But, as so often happens when a jury is given the option of a majority verdict, the knock wasn’t long in coming. A little over half an hour later the news came and people poured back into the courtroom. The Keogh family filed into their seats, faces rigid with anticipation. The sister of one of the two slain men at the centre of the trial took her seat at the side of the court with her brother’s former boss beside her. She looked ahead grimly, waiting for whatever was to come. But Curran’s supporters didn’t show. His eyes kept their darting looking for the familiar face that didn’t arrive as his nervous rocking got faster. By the time the jury took their seats he had given up. Staring straight ahead, his hands clasped in front of his mouth.

At 19 years of age, he was alone when he was told that the jury had unanimously found him guilty of the murder of Polish mechanic Pawel Kalite and also of the murder of Marius Szwajkos by a majority of 11 to 1.

He stared straight ahead as Keogh beside him grinned at the news he had been acquitted on both counts. He will be sentenced for the assault of Mr Kalite later in the month. His family burst into unanimous tears as the verdicts were read out. Across the room Pawel’s sister glanced over coldly. She will have to wait until tomorrow to make her feelings known when victim impact statements will be read to the court as Curran is given the mandatory life sentences.

He has been convicted of two of the most shocking murders in recent years. Pawel Kalite & Marius Szwajkos died when they were stabbed in the head with a Philips screwdriver that Curran had taken from a stolen motorbike.

His defence was that he had thought one of them had stabbed his father but the jury did not accept that version of events. They agreed with the prosecution, that Curran had reacted to an earlier incident in which a young relation was in a tussle with Mr Kalite. The teenagers involved in that earlier row had called Curran, who arrived with Keogh and dealt out swift and fatal retribution.

It’s hard to feel sympathy for someone guilty of such a brutal crime but as he sat there surrounded by his legal team as the court emptied, tears running down his cheeks, it was difficult to not to feel a pang of basic empathy. He suddenly looked extremely young and the full weight of what he had done and the punishment he was facing had obviously just hit.

I’ve had criticism here in the past for showing too much sympathy for the accused in various trials but when you’re telling a story it’s sometimes a by product. I’ve worked in the courts for four years now. I’ve covered a lot of trials. I’ve sat and watched people accused of absolutely unpalatable cruelty to other human beings. But I’ll always try to view everyone with compassion. It’s not always possible. I’m certainly a lot more cynical since I started working here but sometimes, like today you see something that makes you forget for a moment the details on the charge sheet and look on the accused as just another human being.

I think Curran deserved the guilty verdicts. His crime was a terrible one, sudden and shocking in a way that’s not often seen. This case sparked outrage when it happened, there were candlelit vigils in Drimnagh at the scene. It’s the kind of case that makes you feel uncomfortable from the safety of your comfortable middle class life. A story of teens out of control, lives wasted before they had even properly begun, two men who had come to this country to make a better life slain after one of them stood up to the wrong kids. It doesn’t get any less terrible because the killer was upset but when the harsh veneer of feral adolescence is stripped away to show a flash of a frightened, vulnerable kid, the horror, if anything is worse.

Certainly as we all waited for the lift to the ground floor in the standard hanging around that follows a verdict in the hope of a useable quote, Curran’s sudden vulnerability was noted. The sight of him being comforted had left a slightly unpleasant after taste. It made him look so young to have done something so horrible.

Tomorrow we’ll gather again to hear the victim impact statements from the families of the two Polish men as Curran is handed his two life sentences. We’ll hear about the men who died in those few frenzied seconds on that Saturday evening and the effect their loss has had on their grieving families. There’ll be no sympathy for Curran then, and this now is only a moment of thought before I settle down to write my final wrap up of the trial for the Sunday Independent. But no matter how cynical I may become doing this job I never want to forget that everyone who enters that courtroom is a human being and all deserve some basic human compassion now and then.

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