A Dublin man was jailed for 12 years at the Special Criminal Court yesterday for offences connected with the kidnapping of former banker Mr Jim Lacey four years ago. Mr Justice Barr, presiding at the non-jury court, said that Joseph Kavanagh, although not the leader of the gang, had played an important role in the crime.
The judge criticised the drafting and enactment of 1997 legislation which meant that the court could not consider false imprisonment charges against Kavanagh.
Kavanagh (39), a father of five, of Benbulben Road, Crumlin, was jailed for 12 years for the robbery of £243,000 in cash from Mr Eugene Keenan, manager of the National Irish Bank at College Green in Dublin, on November 2nd, 1993.
He was given a five-year sentence for demanding cash with menaces and another 12-year term for having a handgun with intent to commit false imprisonment on November 2nd, 1993.
All the sentences were ordered to run concurrently and were back-dated to July 20th, 1994, when Kavanagh was charged with the offences before the court.
The court ruled that it could not consider other charges against Kavanagh of falsely imprisoning Mr Jim Lacey, his wife Joan and their daughter Suzanne, because of a legal technicality.
The technicality arose because a new Act passed this year recategorised the offences of kidnapping and false imprisonment from common law offences to statutory offences. The indictments against Kavanagh, however, were brought under common law.
Mr Justice Barr said Kavanagh's counsel, Mr Barry White, had made submissions relating to indictments against him which referred to offences of false imprisonment contrary to common law and to section 11 of the Criminal Law Act of 1976. Under the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act, 1997, the common law offences of kidnapping and false imprisonment had been replaced by statutory ones. The judge said that it followed from Mr White's submissions that the court could not consider the false imprisonment counts.
"The court regards it as surprising and most unfortunate that those having responsibility for the drafting and enactment of the 1997 Act should have made obvious errors of such a serious nature," he added.
Mr Justice Barr said the court rejected Kavanagh's explanation that he himself had been kidnapped by the gang and threatened, and that his family had also been threatened, to force him to play a role in the robbery.
The judge said the court was satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant's part in the robbery was "as a voluntary collaborator". During the six-day trial, the court was told that Joseph Kavanagh told gardai he was himself kidnapped and held for two weeks before agreeing to drive Mr Lacey to the National Irish Bank branch at College Green in Dublin, where a ransom of £243,000 was loaded into a van.
Kavanagh had told Mr Lacey that the gang was holding his two sons and had shot one of them in the hand. Mr Lacey agreed to go to the bank after an armed gang of up to seven men forced their way into his home at Blackrock, Co Dublin, and tied up his wife and family.
Mrs Joan Lacey, her four children, Suzanne (14), Robert (13), Louise (10) and Sara Jane (6) and their babysitter, Ms Tanya Waters, were taken from their home and later freed by gardai in a stables near the Phoenix Park.
Kavanagh accompanied Mr Lacey to the National Irish Bank at College Green, where £243,000 in cash was loaded into three plastic sacks and put in a van which Kavanagh then drove to a laneway off Maxwell Road in Rathmines.
Det Supt Cormac Gordon said Kavanagh was a former soldier, who had served for 16 months between 1973 and 1974, but he was not aware of any employment since then.
He said Kavanagh had received lone parent's allowance up to May 1994. His wife and her brother had been killed in a traffic accident in 1988.
Kavanagh's counsel, Mr Barry White, pleading mitigation, said his client had not subjected the Lacey children or their babysitter to the ordeal of giving evidence.
A statement from the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform last night said that the Minister, Mr O'Donoghue, in consultation with the Attorney General, was urgently considering the implications of yesterday's Special Criminal Court verdict, with a view to taking whatever action was necessary to rectify the position.
"Today's decision arose because of changes made to the law by the Non Fatal Offences against the Person Act, 1997, which was enacted by the Oireachtas on May 19, 1997. The Minister notes that the defendant in the case today was convicted on other charges and sentenced to a substantial term of imprisonment," the statement added.