Tag: Journalism (Page 5 of 14)

A Book Recommendation

7th November 2009 / Abigail / 0 Comments

A former colleague of mine has just brought out a book on the trial of Ronnie Dunbar for the murder of Sligo teenager Melissa Mahon.

The Ronnie Dunbar trial was one of the most disturbing trials we’ve had in recent years. I wrote about it extensively here as I covered it for the Sunday Independent. Dunbar was a charismatic accused, an intense heavily tattooed figure who believed that one day he was to be the King of a new world order which he would rule with his dogs and his will.

He told his teenage daughters and Melissa that these tattoos could banish demons and ghosts. It was two years before Melissa’s skeleton remains were found on the shores of Lough Gill in Sligo, weathered by the elements and gnawed by wild animals. It was only then that Dunbar’s daughters came forward to tell a harrowing story of murder, terror and concealment that would form the basis for the prosecution case against their father.

Dunbar was the person that the vulnerable Melissa had run to when her fraught homelife was too much. Someone she trusted and looked up to…someone who she loved and allegedly told people was her lover.

Bronagh has set out the whole story of this extraordinary case. So if you want a good read…you know where to go.

The Closure of INN

31st October 2009 / Abigail / 1 Comment

Last night the passing of an Irish media institution was marked. Independent Network News or INN had provided news bulletins for local stations around the country for the past twelve years. It had formed in 1997 after the two Dublin stations, FM 104 and 98FM, who had previously provided the service banded together to provide a single service for the country.

It’s been the starting point of many a career, my own included, but at the beginning of the month it was announced that the service was to close with the loss of all jobs there. Staff found out they were out of a job when they heard it on the national RTE lunchtime radio news.

Staff, backed by the journalists’ union, the NUJ, did what they could but last night the staff and colleagues from throughout the industry met to mark the closure.

Journalism can be a really shitty business sometimes.

That’s about all I can say on the subject. I’m not going into the whys and wherefores here but my thoughts are with my friends and colleagues who lost their jobs yesterday. It was a dark day for Irish media.

I’ll leave the last word to INN themselves. The final bulletin, read by news editor Richie Cullen, which was broadcast at 12 midnight, last night October 30th 2009.

On the Perfect Trial and the Bane of Tax Returns

21st October 2009 / Abigail / 0 Comments

I haven’t been writing about murder here much for the past few months. There’s a reason for that. Apart from the fact I’ve been busily immersed in a fantasy of my own creation (the book I’ve been working on not some kind of breakdown) it’s been very quiet in that department since July.

The courts summer break, through August and September, is always a quiet period. It’s one of the things I love about working down there…I have two clear months every year to write without a daily deadline. Last year I wrote Devil in the Red Dress, this year I spent the months editing my novel.

The courts have been back since the beginning of October but it’s been a slow start. The trials passing through the doors of the Central Criminal court haven’t been the type that would easily tempt an editor. One of the least savoury aspects of this job is the fact that you rapidly start to see trials from an almost commercial standpoint. There are certain cases that get everyone talking, the one’s with the “water cooler” edge and those are the ones you look out for.

It’s not that journalists are unnecessarily ghoulish, it’s just that we know the trials the public want to read about. Cases with elements that mark them out of the ordinary so that they stand apart from the standard details of these brutal crimes. It’s a sad fact that familiarity really does breed contempt so if there are too many of a particular type of trial the public, and consequently the press lose interest. Every murder used to be big news in the days when there were only a couple a year. These days we can have one a day so the process of selection begins. Anything unusual about a trial will elevate it to something of interest. The bigger the violence, the tragedy or the irony the bigger the splash will be. It’s not unusual, the selection process was no different in the Victorian press, even if the style of writing may have changed over the years.

Anyway, trials like this have been thin on the ground since the courts went back. It might seem as though there is always a big murder in the news but that’s not always the case. There can be a run of trials at some times and nothing for months at others.

So here I am at home waiting on news of one book and the next one not yet started. This is a time to catch up with all the minutiae of self employed life; updating the diary, filing notes and cuttings, filling in tax returns. Tax returns are the bane of the self employed existence. I’m not organised enough to find myself an accountant ahead of the deadline so in the middle of October you’ll find me up to my elbows in receipts, tearing my hair out and shouting at my calculator. I like the freelance life but taxes are our penance for a bit of freedom.

If you’ve never filled out a return you are very, very lucky. It’s a labarynthine form and if you’re not mathmatically inclined or, I’m increasingly inclined to thing, in possession of a qualification in advanced cryptography, trying to understand them is like trying to run while waist deep in mud. They’re doable, eventually, but at the end I always feel as if I’ve handed over a portion of my soul as well as a chunk of my bank balance.

Speaking of which I’d better get back to them.

Lively Debate

16th October 2009 / Abigail / 0 Comments

Last night I went to the inaugural Insight Debate at the National College of Ireland. It’s not something I’d normally have gone to (my college days are long behind me and there never seems to be any time) but as the motion was “this house believes that the scales of justice are tilted towards the criminal” I made the effort.

Given the day job it was a subject that I’m more than familiar with and one that often comes up in the courts – prolonged exposure to the court beat tends to send people either to the right or the left so discussions can get heated. Even in the controlled circumstances of a formal debate structure like last night, things got heated.

The lecture theatre was packed and there were plenty of familiar faces dotted around. I was live tweeting the debate, trying to get as many of the main points as I could but once the discussion was opened to the floor it was almost impossible to keep up.

This is a subject that will always get people’s blood up. Crime is something that affects everyone living in a society and we can’t avoid the latest escapades of a bewildering array of miscreants that seem to keep some red tops in business. Now granted, for me, a substantial drop in the crime rate would be fairly disastrous for the bank balance but it’s impossible to sit through trial after trial, especially at Circuit Court level, without forming some opinions about whether or not the criminal justice system works or not.

As I said, it’s a topic that comes up fairly frequently among my colleagues and I’ve often heard the opinion that working the court beat can actually make you sleep safer in your bed. It really is a case of the devil you know. You realise that the gardai, for the most part, do their jobs well and there are a lot less miscarriages of justice than you might previously have thought. Even though I’ve written here about some of the more peculiar decisions that are made in the courts, the reason I comment on them is because they are peculiar.

More often than not once you’ve sat through the horrific details of some crime with the absolute certainty that the tattooed thug beside you did everything he was accused of and probably more, you have the satisfaction of seeing a conviction at the end of it. Juries might be subject to certain flights of lunacy on occasion but for the vast majority of the time the bad guys go to jail and the innocent men walk free. It doesn’t always work but it mostly does and it’s the safest system we have. Having 12 random men and women who will not look on court proceeding with the jaundiced eyes that familiarity can breed, is a hell of a lot fairer for all concerned than any alternative I can think of.

It was fascinating to watch the debate and hear the comments that came from the floor. Certain issues stood out through repitition and showed current preoccupations. Rather unsurprisingly the subject of white collar crime was a recurring theme. It seemed to be a general consensus that many in the audience, regardless of which side of the motion they came down on, would rather see the prisons full of bankers than many of the others who currently lodge there. I could be wrong but I think that every speaker made a crack about John O’Donoghue’s ignominious departure from the post of Ceann Comhairle earlier this week. I get the feeling though that jokes about expenses are going to be satirical currency for many months, if not years, to come.

The idea of treating those who end up in the criminal justice system through disadvantage and drug addiction with a degree of compassion is one you see a lot in the Circuit courts. The idea that there are people who wouldn’t commit crimes if they could kick the drugs comes easily if you listen to sentencing after sentencing where the defence mitigation speech sounds the same. Education for those in the lowest economic groups and access for treatment for those who become addicted to expensive drug habits with no way to support them, would appear to be a no brainer.

The idea that those involved in the criminal justice system need to be treated like human beings instead of numbers arose on both sides of the debate. The more vulnerable amoung those accused of crimes deserve a way to get themselves out of the hole they are in and the system needs it’s checks and balances to ensure that those accused of a crime get a properly fair trial. We’re back to the jury on this, and the presumption of innocence.

This presumption is the cornerstone of Irish justice. It’s the way we do things here and it’s a far more dignified way to treat those in the dock. Even the dock in Irish courts no longer exists so that the accused is not stigmatised by having a set place to sit. OK so in practice they all sit in the same place, that seat formally known as the dock, but the principal is there.

The presumption of innocence seems to be the hardest part for those affected by crime to grasp. Why should someone who you know has done you wrong, because you were there or because you know the facts of the case, get to be treated like an innocent man.

I know it can be difficult for victims families in a murder trial when the accused swans in through the Four Courts gates ahead of them each morning before the trial. They find it galling to watch the defence successfully exclude reams of evidence that make up part of the complex case the gardai have painstakingly built. I can’t comment on the wrongs and rights of the evidence and the bail but while a trial is ongoing all you can if you are there to see justice for your loved one, is trust that things will work out. Most of the time they do.

It must be hard to watch someone you believe to be guilty treated with kid gloves but better that than an innocent man treated like the devil himself.

The flip side of this issue, which was returned to time and again by both the audience and the team proposing the motion, is that of victims rights. Ger Philpott from Advocates for Victims of Homicide (AdVic), spoke movingly of his experiences of the justice system as he watched the trial of the men accused of the murder of his nephew Russell Deane.

I’ve seen mothers of those killed thrown out of the court for crying as the story of their child’s last moments is recounted to the court. I know why their displays of emotion don’t play well with the defence but it’s always one of the most awkward bits of a trial when it happens. Victims don’t really have a place in the prosecution of a case. If they weren’t around for the events leading to their relation’s death they might not even be called as a witness. Often the only thing they can do is provide a victim impact statement at the very end, once a conviction has been secured. I’ve seen some very nasty characters indeed milk their status as an innocent defendant as a blatant way of twisting the hearts of their victims even more.

Crime by it’s very nature hurts those it happens to. Those wounds run deep and the criminal justice system doesn’t always help the healing process – one of the points thrown up the the audience was that even data protection legislation conspires against victims of violent crime and their families. Under these rules the gardai are forbidden from passing on their details to some of the support groups set up expressly to help them.

It was perhaps inevitable that the ayes would have it and the motion would pass. Our justice system is a complex thing built over centuries, in need of modernisation and streamlining perhaps but for the moment it’s the one we have to work with. When we read about the criminal gangs who maim, kill and wreak lives, then terrify those who could be witnesses to send them away it’s hard not to feel that this world we live in is a dark one indeed. We can be passionate about human rights and justice but if crime comes into your life it’s hard to keep that objectivity. It was great to see the subject debated so thoroughly though. It’s always good to challenge viewpoints and I’ll look forward to the next debate with interest.

I’m just playing around with some of the ideas thrown out last night here. I’m not saying which side I voted for merely continuing the discussion. Feel free to join in!

The Ramblings of a Pompous Ass!

27th September 2009 / Abigail / 1 Comment

So Joe O’Reilly has been corresponding with the media. One can’t help but wonder what possessed him to enter into an exchange of letters with journalists from the Star Sunday. Has he not learnt by now that his proclamations of innocence continue to fall on deaf ears because most people in his country are too familiar with the facts of his wife’s brutal murder; she was bludgeoned to death so thoroughly that her blood spattered the ceiling above her body.

Today’s Star Sunday contains O’Reilly’s thoughts on his conviction and his life in jail. He comes across, not as an evil cold blooded killer but as a none too bright pompous snob who boasts about the book club he set up in the Midlands Prison and once again tries to talk his way out of murder in the way he has ever since his wife was killed.

During his 2007 trial it came out that O’Reilly was in the habit of blabbing to anyone who would listen. He commented to a friend that the gardai were looking in the wrong place for the murder weapon, ran through a blow-by-blow (excuse the pun) account of the murder for his wife’s family and talked to half the journalists in town about how he was the number one suspect.

Despite the fact that these tactics quite spectacularly failed to keep him out of jail, it appears that he still uses them. His dazzling critisism of the mobile phone evidence that placed him near the murder scene at the time was confused to say the least.

“I will leave you with these thoughts/questions. 1. Ever had a dropped call? 2. Ever lose your signal? Have you ever stretched your arm 800 yards down a hill, past a door, through two doors, turn left, down a hallway, left into a bedroom, kill someone then leave the way you came without being seen? No? Me either. But I HAVE dropped a call and I have lost a signal…SO, hardly water-tight technology eh?”

Brilliant! I’m sure the combined forces of the DPP and the Gardai are quaking in their boots at such brilliant point scoring! This is a man who genuinely thinks that he will be able to convince the journalists he is writing to, and presumably the public, that he loved his wife and was dead against domestic violence. He conveniently forgets that his mistress, Nikki Pelly has been a regular tabloid fixture since his conviction and that vitriolic emails about his wife that he sent to his sister were one of the highlights of the evidence against him.

O’Reilly is either delusional or so arrogant that he thinks his charm will wipe any previous knowledge from the minds of those he addresses. He obviously has some intelligence but not half as much as he thinks he has. What struck me about the article was not his claims about the flaws in the prosecution or his cheeky suggestion that whoever murdered Irene White must also have killed Rachel. The details that said most about the character of Joe O’Reilly were the priggish comments about films and books, details that reveal a snobbish idiot who crows about how only he and the prison librarian really enjoyed Barrack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope.

“That was one of the books a few of us read in here, as part of a small book club we have. That actually makes it sound more grandiose than it is. All the ‘book club’ is, is an initiative myself and a few others started up through the school and the library to get (well try to) people in here interested in books and reading. Then giving them a platform by which to give an opinion about the book for that month.”

So now we have the the crusading teacher of the less fortunate. The man’s idiocy truly knows no bounds.

These letters represent a massive coup for the Star Sunday. Fair play to them for getting him to talk but ultimately what today’s article shows is how little the unrepentant convict has to say. All you will hear when you talk to someone like Joe O’Reilly are justifications and obfuscations. He’s not going to suddenly admit what he did, so you are left with the surreal ravings of an insubstantial alibi. The same kind of idiocy that made O.J. Simpson write If I Did It. It’s arrogance and attention seeking at their worst. But it does make great copy!

And Now For Something Completely Different!

22nd September 2009 / Abigail / 0 Comments

For the past couple of months I’ve had my head buried in Word as I worked on finishing my second book. As the end approached I got more and more tunnel visioned and consequently my updates here have been sporadic to say the least.

Well today I sent the finished opus off to my agent. Changes have been made, characters further developed and endings tweaked until I was as happy as I was ever going to be. I’m not saying that I will never write another word in that particular manuscript – there may be changes suggested along the way from agent or, eventually a publisher – but I am now stepping away and saying enough.

It’s been a long journey with this particular book. The opposite experience to last summers frenzy to get Devil in the Red Dress finished so that the book could be released as soon as possible after the sentencing in the trial. The new book is not a trial book. It’s fiction, fantasy fiction at that.

It comes from an idea that had it’s seeds in my childhood. The manuscript I sent to my agent today might have had very little in common with the story I wrote on my mum’s manual typewriter at the kitchen table one winter when I was about 11, but that was the genesis. One or two of the characters share names with the earlier attempt, a few bear a passing physical resemblance but the story is a totally different animal.

I’m happy with my finished draft. I think it can stand up on it’s own but ultimately it doesn’t matter what I think. From now on it’s on it’s own. I’ll be open to suggestions with any last minute tweaks but the story I wanted to write has now been written and it’s time to start something new.

For the past couple of chapters in the edit I’ve been thinking ahead to what comes next. This book will have a sequel, a few chapters of a preliminary draft already exist. Then there’s the world that this blog and Devil belong to. Mainly concerned with crime and courts.

The courts are back in a couple of weeks and I’ll need to check the diary and plan what to do next. I’ve also started thinking about a follow up to Devil but that’s a story for another day.

One thing I’ve learnt about writing over the past year or more is that it never stops. You’re either writing something or you’re thinking about writing something. There is no time when a little part of your brain isn’t looking and noticing and filing away anything that might be useful. This is just the way the mind works in this kind of job, it’s a nervous tick, a habit you get into.

I’ll miss the characters I’ve spent the summer with. They were my first, old friends who I know as well or better than people I see on a regular basis. I’ll never work with them in the same way again and that’s a little sad but I’m excited about what comes next.

It’s been a long time since I’ve explored the thrill of the blank page. I’m looking forward to the blocking and the researching and the roughing that must all come before I’m back to the polishing.

So tomorrow I’ll get up and start that something completely different. The notebooks will be unearthed from their summer resting places and I’ll be back dealing with reality. There’s a couple of weeks to get organised before the courts are back and I’m raring to go.

So I’ll be writing here more regularly from now on. The summer’s over and normal service has been resumed!

An Honourable Mention

20th August 2009 / Abigail / 1 Comment

I was absolutely chuffed a couple of weeks ago to be asked by Chapters Bookstore here in Dublin to do a Q&A for their blog. They have a regular post in which writers answer 5 questions. My answers went up today.

I was honoured to be asked. Ask anyone in Dublin who loves to read and they will tell you that Chapters is the best book shop in town. That’s not to say there aren’t other great ones but Chapters is the largest independent book shop in town and is always a treasure trove of both new and second hand finds.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know and I am now going to go and try and shrink my head a little!

A More Fictional Kind of Murder

18th August 2009 / Abigail / 0 Comments

Today I realised one of my characters has to die. It’s a surprising realisation to come to, so late in the editing process but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. It’s a sad conclusion to come to though, as this character is one of the few who’s survived since the earliest incarnation of this story. There’s even a picture of him, drawn by a family friend, an illustrator, on the back of the earliest draft of the germ of an idea back when I was only 11 or so.

All the characters feel as real as distant friends. I know their likes and dislikes, their moods, their faults. In the early days of planning I would pick out their favourite music, favourite books, favourite films. It was the same process as new friends or lovers go through…except that I was providing both answer and question. It sounds nuts, certifiable maybe, but I don’t know any other way of getting to know a character as if they are real. When it works then, once the story starts rolling, it can feel as if the characters take control and guide what direction a scene takes. Those are the days when the writing really flows.

But the axe has to be swung. It works for the plot, gives other characters more passion and is generally a good idea. I’ll miss this one but the time has come so now I’m going to have to play at murder.

The problem with the day job is that murder is something I’m rather familiar with. I’ve sat next to quite a few people who’ve killed, over the past couple of years, even spoken to a couple. As I prepare for my fictional murder a wealth of details present themselves. Do I use blunt object trauma? Strangulation? A weapon – knife, axe, slash hook?

It sounds callous, ghoulish even, but when you spend a lot of time listening to evidence in murder trials it can be difficult not to sift through the details like a connoisseur looking for the juiciest chunks. You become desensitised to the horror of forensic details. As a journalist you look at evidence in terms of the hook that will snare your reader down past the first paragraph. As a writer you look at the details, the relics of someone’s life and death as components to be filed away for future reference.

So now I’m planning my own murder from the pick n’ mix of details, real and fictional. It’s impossible to think of a knife attack without memories of dozens of post mortem accounts, the length of the blade, the angle of thrust, the difference in slicing or stabbing gestures.

If poisoning is the option do I go with historical methods – take inspiration from the Borgias perhaps – or do I tread a more familiar path – look into the poisons mentioned in the emails between the Devil in the Red Dress herself, Sharon Collins, and her Internet “hitman” Essam Eid?

I’m fond of this particular character. It’s a long and interesting association. I want the death to be a fitting one…the sacrifice will make a better book. I’ll plan the murder carefully so that it satisfies both the journalist in me and the storyteller. And then I’ll raise a glass to the fallen character and get on with the rest of the book.

What I Do On My Summer Holidays…or How to Avoid the Silly Season

5th August 2009 / Abigail / 0 Comments

August is always a quiet month. Even if you’re in a newsroom this is the month when the “silly season” hits. The courts and politicians are all on holiday and so the news that’s there to be covered can be rather thin on the ground. In terms of general news the silly season hasn’t fully hit…one of the few plus points of a rather nasty recession. If, like me, you work in the courts, however, the shop is well and truly shut from the very start of August until the beginning of October.

Some of the courts still sit – the High Court and the Children’s Court still process cases from time to time as needed. The District court too has a constant stream of miscreants, but I don’t work in any of those courts. My bread and butter is the Central Criminal Court so August and September are extremely quiet as there’s simply nothing doing. People may get murdered, other people may get charged, but the actual murder trials are on hold until term starts in October.

So every summer I have a choice. Either sit at home and twiddle my thumbs for two months or try and find something productive to do. Two years ago I was making trips down to the Mahon Tribunal to take down our former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s testimony. Last year I wrote Devil in the Red Dress. This year it’s an altogether different project.

I’m writing a novel – well to be more exact, I’ve already written the novel but it still needs further editing before it’s in a state I’m happy to send out to publishers. I’ve mentioned it on numerous occasions on this blog but now I’m several weeks into the editing process it’s become more of an obsession and less casual material for this blog.

Editing is far more of a slog than the free flowing drafting that initially creates the story. This is the time when you are chipping away at the raw material and trying to make it into something that’s actually readable. When I’m drafting the words might flow and the plot might spring into place organically (if I’m very, very lucky) but editing is down to the minutiae, the technical nitty, gritty of the writing process.

This is the time when you realise how often you’ve used certain words and phrases and get over your initial blushes to fix the problem. This is when you take out the irrelevant words; the ands, thens, or whiches that can safely be chopped to make a cleaner more fluid sentence.

Because no matter how fluid your writing may feel when you’re drafting, it will always benefit from a strict vetting with a red pen. When you’re in the middle of it it can seem counter intuitive that this sometimes tortuous process can be the thing that frees up a page but that’s how it works. I always liked the analogy of editing being like a sculptor chipping away at his marble until something beautiful emerges.

Of course, you edit with journalism and non fiction as well but it’s a far more perfunctory affair than with fiction. With journalism you are writing in a much more rigid structure so while it can be cleaned up or streamlined, the kind of in depth surgery that a larger piece requires just isn’t necessary.

So I’ve been spending large chunks of every day sitting at my laptop. I left behind the red pen some time ago and now we’re down to the actual physical changing of the words in the manuscript. When it gets to this stage it really becomes an obsession. The manuscript becomes a god, a drug. Every moment you are away from it there is an ache that simply will not stop.

I’ve been working for the past few weeks on a little table in front of my bedroom window. It’s not a perfect setting. I’m used to working at my desk with all my touchstones and paraphernalia that I like to think make me a better writer, or that help the inspiration to flow. Much as I love my desk, it’s in a rather busy place, fine when I’m on my home in the house but not really workable when there are other people in the house and this summer we have a prolonged guest.

So I sit at my little table and look at the trees outside the window. It’s the kind of place I would have picked to work in the past, before deadlines became an issue and publication of any kind was a simple dream. The fact that the internet up here is sporadic at best and there’s no direct light and there’s not even space to put a mug of tea would drive me up the wall if I was writing my usual fare, which is generally fueled by caffeine and online research.

But for this job of editing, which I have promised to finish before the courts go back (after way too many years almost there) my little table is an oasis. A different space that allows me to have the quiet and the concentration to do the chipping away that I must.

Up here, I wouldn’t now a silly season if it beat it’s wings against the window, although I’d probably be momentarily distracted. It’s another world, far away from deadlines, and column inches and the Four Courts. In the end it’s all work but I’m feeling very fortunate this year to spend the summer writing in the bedroom and watching the sunshine and the barbecues going on below.

Murderers and Rapists and Some Figures

26th July 2009 / Abigail / 0 Comments

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.

The Books

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