It’s been a long week and I haven’t been posting here as often as I should.  I’ve missed a couple of court related things that I had meant to write up and apologies for that.

On Thursday for example the Court Service launched their annual report – big news when you’re in my line of work.  I’ve linked to the synopsis of the main figures so I won’t go into them in detail but the one I was most concerned with was the murder stats.  They were up once again, not because of an increase in murders, but because of the rate at which the courts are dealing with them.  Since murders are my bread and butter work this was good news for me…and I know that other rises have been a cause of relief to colleagues who work in other areas as well.

I wasn’t around to write about the figures because I had to make a trip down to Galway for the sentencing of Gerald Barry for rape.  He was sentenced on Friday to two life sentences.  He’s already serving one for the murder of Manuela Riedo, the Swiss student he killed only eight weeks after this rape.

He will serve all three sentences at once, rather than one after the other.  That’s the way sentences work here.  Most will be concurrent, unless the crime was committed while on bail for a separate offence.  It’s not a great rule and with an animal like Barry it just doesn’t seem fair.

Judge Paul Carney was extremely outspoken in his sentencing.  He told Barry that he did not deserve to have the 25% off that every convicted man or women can look forward to as a carrot to encourage good behaviour in jail.  This is another point on Irish sentencing that can be extremely hard to explain to those not familiar with the workings of Irish courts.

Why should someone who has killed someone in cold blood be entitled to the knowledge that the sentence they are handed will automatically be shorter than the one read out in court?  It’s one of those things, like the fact that Irish judges cannot give a recommendation on the minimum part of a life sentence that should be served before the convicted is allowed to be eligible for bail.  This is the situation in the UK but not here…an Irish life sentence can be as little as 12 years…but that’s something for another day.

All in all it’s been a very busy week.  Next week the courts rise for their summer vacation and I will be back at the keyboard working on this year’s book.  I must admit I’m looking forward to it.

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