THE SUPREME Court has ordered the extradition of a Co Mayo man who fled here after escaping from a mental hospital in England where he was being detained following a rape and assault.
Michael Joseph Murphy (55) was born in Co Mayo. He was homeless and selling the Big Issue in London in July 1993 when he raped and assaulted a college student there who had befriended him. Murphy was sentenced at the Central Criminal Court in London in August 1994 to a hospital order with special restrictions to be detained indefinitely at Prestwick Hospital in Cheshire.
He escaped in November 2006 and came to Ireland. He was arrested here in March 2007 on a rape charge and remains detained here.
The three-judge Supreme Court unanimously dismissed Murphy’s appeal yesterday against a High Court order authorising his extradition to England but postponed the implementation of that order until he has finished his sentence here.
The court essentially had to determine whether the detention as provided for in the English order is detention for which an order for surrender may be made under Irish law.
Mrs Justice Susan Denham said she would define a detention order under section 10(d) of the EAW Act 2003 as any order involving deprivation of liberty made by a criminal court in addition to, or instead of, a prison sentence.
In this case, the detention order was made by a criminal court after conviction instead of a prison sentence. In those circumstances, she said, section 10(d) applied to the detention order and the Supreme Court would affirm the High Court order for his extradition.
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