So the Minister for Justice considers the murder of poor Donna Cleary a "watershed" in our sentencing policy, does he? But with due respect, Minister, some of us had thought we had reached that point a long, long time ago, writes Kevin Myers
Consider Stephen Phelan of Kimmage in Dublin. Armed with various knives, one night three years ago he went on a rampage through the city, variously waking 13 people from their beds. Most victims were beaten, stabbed, bitten or slashed. Phelan threatened one victim with beheading, another with castration. A woman was told her nipples would be cut off. Yet another victim, a male student, was stabbed nine times.
The night's entertainment finished when he made one woman strip naked, cutting off her pants himself, and then made her simulate sex with a male victim. In the course of his trial on this charge of sexual assault - to which he pled not guilty - he head-butted a prison officer. In all, he faced 17 charges. He was found guilty of the sexual assault on the woman - he had pled guilty on most of the others. The court was told that a psychiatrist was seriously concerned about him ever being released while he remained a drug addict. He had 30 previous convictions.
What sentence did he get? Go on. Guess how much time he got. With various sentences being made to run concurrently, in effect he was given a total of nine years. Guilty on 17 charges on top of 30 previous convictions, and out in six years, when he will be just 26. What a delightful thought.
The judges who are so judicious and measured with their sentences do not live in the same estates as such savages. Nor, I suspect, does the RTÉ broadcaster Joe Duffy, who 10 years ago challenged bailiffs who had arrived to evict the Cunningham family from their Mulhuddart council home for rent arrears. Faced with an on-air confrontation, the bailiffs withdrew. Well done Duffo, another triumph for your witless brand of bawled populism.
At that time, one Cunningham brother, Gary (16), was one of three boys who had been killed at Ratoath, Co Meath, when the stolen car they were in went out of control. Another brother was stabbed to death in 2000. And a third, Paul, became a criminal terrorist, involved in many shootings. At the time he was himself shot-gunned to death in 2004, he was on bail facing firearms charges, and had already racked up 20 previous convictions. That such a creature was still at large, and on bail, is ludicrous; utterly, manifestly, grotesquely ludicrous.
The foregoing crimes were by men involved in narcotics. But we have also seen excessive leniency towards sexual crime. It is two years since I wrote - in disbelief - of the rape and murder of Bettina Poeschel by the serial killer and rapist Michael Murphy of Rathmullen Park, Drogheda, Co Louth.
In 1984, when he was 22, Murphy deliberately choked 65-year-old Catherine Carroll on a street in Drogheda. Bizarrely, he was found guilty merely of manslaughter and served just eight years in jail. Five years after his release, he attacked two more women. For this he was given just six months' imprisonment. Think about it: six months for an assault on two women by an already convicted killer. So not even a suspended sentence hung over him when he attacked, raped and murdered Bettina Poeschel in 2001. In effect, the State had become a passive accomplice to this creature's violent sexual crimes against women.
More recently, Kevin Healy of Gort na Fludaigh, Beal
Átha 'n Ghaorthaigh, Cork, raped an American woman in the city. He then overpowered a garda trying to arrest him and stole his radio. He was finally cornered by the garda and two civilians and arrested. His trial heard how his victim's life had been ruined. Even going to the grocery store, church or a mailbox had become "terrifying tasks" for which she needed the assistance of a friend.
At Healy's trial, Det Sgt Murphy agreed with Patrick MacEntee SC, defending, that the accused did not get treated for a fractured arm as a result of a baton strike in the course of the arrest until the following morning. To which I can only say, good. The rapist Healy - naturally - told defending counsel that he had been abused as a child by a distant family member. (Does anyone ever appear in court these days who was not abused in childhood?) He also said he had been bullied in school. Ah wuzzums. Even more tragic, the court heard that Healy had not completed his thesis for a master's degree in UCC because he had been suffering from depression and was not able to concentrate. Lord above, I am moved to tears.
What sentence did this creature get for orally raping a young woman, and then violently attacking and robbing a garda? A total of six years' imprisonment - but stay! The last 18 months of the concurrent terms were then, blessedly, suspended. In effect, four-and-a-half years - which means he will be out in three, when maybe he can finish his master's at UCC, the poor lamb.
No, Minister: anyone who has had the melancholy distinction of studying our courts will know how dangerous professional criminals and sexual deviants over the years have been the beneficiaries of an endless diet of lawyerly babble and judicial clemency. And if the courts had done their duty long ago, maybe Bettina Poeschel would still be alive, and probably, so too would Donna Cleary.