Seamus Sorahan:SÉAMUS SORAHAN SC, who has died aged 84, was one of Ireland's best-known lawyers having built up an extensive practice, mainly in criminal defence work.
He came to prominence in the Lawless case which got under way in 1957. The case concluded in Strasbourg in 1961 when he brought Ireland before the European Court of Human Rights challenging the use of internment without trial, which led to the ending of the practice.
A senior member of the Bar described his “much-loved” colleague as an exceptional advocate who could marshal arguments from the 17th or 18th century law books with the same passion as he could enthral a Dublin jury. “In the cliché, he never feared to break a lance with the Bench in the pursuit of his client’s interests.”
Born in Dublin in 1924, he was the son of James and Bridget Sorahan, who ran a grocery and vintner business at Lower Sean McDermott Street. He received his early education at Loreto Convent, North Great George’s Street, and O’Connell Schools. He completed his studies at University College Dublin and Kings Inns.
He was called to the Bar in 1952 and to the Inner Bar in 1972.
At UCD he was renowned for making what a fellow student called “rousing republican speeches” from the benches at meetings of the LH. In 1945 he took his republicanism to the streets when on VE Day, with Charles Haughey and other UCD students, he took part in the burning of a Union Jack flag outside Trinity College where students were celebrating the Allies’ victory.
His republican sympathies never waned. He told a public meeting organised by the Irish Civil Rights Association in 1975 that the Criminal Law Jurisdiction Bill played into the hands of the British government. He described the Bill as the only surviving relic of the “happily ill-fated Sunningdale agreement”.
In 1980 he told 1,000 people demonstrating in support of the H-Blocks protests in Dublin that a victory in the struggle for the blanket protesters in the Maze was near. He subsequently marched in support of the H-Blocks hunger strikers and spoke in support of the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four.
In 1970 he was the leading counsel for John Kelly in the Arms Trial when his client, Charles Haughey and two other defendants were acquitted on charges of illegally importing arms.
The president of the High Court, Mr Justice Andreas O’Keeffe, in 1972 threatened to commit him for contempt of court unless he withdrew remarks about provisions of the Offences Against the State Act. Mr Justice O’Keeffe told him the court was no place for “soap-box oratory”.
In 1976 he represented Noel and Marie Murray in their appeal against the death penalty following their conviction for the murder in 1975 of Garda Michael Reynolds. The capital conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court and the sentence commuted to life imprisonment.
In 1978 he defended Bernard McNally, one of four men charged with the Sallins mail train robbery in 1976. The trial was notable for allegations of beatings and the relentless questioning of suspects. His client was convicted but eventually freed on appeal.
In 1983, he was prosecuting counsel in a case where a young man was beaten to death in a blatant act of “queer-bashing”. Controversially, when it came to their sentencing, the judge said there was nothing to be served in sending any of the defendants to jail.
A supporter of prison reform, in 1977 he told a prisoners’ committee meeting that if judges took a keener interest in exercising their rights and visiting prisons, some of the “more terrible excesses” of the prison staff might be curbed, if not eliminated altogether.
In 1988 he was taken to task by The Irish Times over remarks to a jury at the Circuit Criminal Court in a sexual assault case involving three young girls. Referring to “one of the great quicksands in evidence”, he was reported to have said: “It is not merely the evidence of females; it is the evidence of children.”
Acknowledging both the accuracy of the original report and his embarrassment about the “quicksands” remark, he told the newspaper: “Your terrible verbal excesses in print is one of the perils of the advocate.”
He twice fell foul of the Revenue Commissioners. In 1982, the master of the High Court ordered him to pay two years income tax amounting to IR£42,249 and in 1989, the Revenue registered two separate judgments against him for amounts totalling IR£108,737.
He continued to practise into the new millennium until illness struck. Mr Justice Paul Carney remarked in 2006 that oratory had “all but disappeared from the [legal] system, particularly with the retirement of Séamus Sorahan”.
Charming, handsome and a dapper dresser, he was a Joyce enthusiast and book lover. Remembered for his extreme generosity to all who came to him – whether a person down on their luck or a young colleague – he is guaranteed a fond place in the lore of the Bar.
He is survived by his wife Maureen (née Kilbane) and sister Úna.
Séamus Sorahan: born September 9th, 1924; died July 5th, 2009.