Musicians and writers have put on "a show of solidarity" with the American writer and homosexual Robert Drake who was beaten unconscious in Sligo recently - though whether the thugs responsible attacked him because he was an American, a writer or a homosexual, or variations of these three, or none of them, we cannot say. No such "show of solidarity" with Pat O'Donnell, the security guard killed while doing his duty in the Four Courts library, is likely; but then he had the grave misfortune to be neither American, nor a writer, nor a homosexual.
Perhaps the proximity of that crime to home might make our barristers reconsider the culture of their profession, the querulous sanctimony of which has repeatedly presided over the pre-trial release of the accused for the tiniest of technical details.
Irish jurisprudence
That the diseased pedantry of Irish jurisprudence should have preferred to unpick entire quilts because of a single missed stitch here or there, at a time when those quilts were needed against the wicked blast of cross-Border terrorist fascism, speaks - albeit in the carefully modulated tones of the profession - volumes for its priorities. Known bombers walked free from remand proceedings because a "t" was not crossed, free to bomb again; and bomb again and kill again they assuredly did.
Of course, Rose-Marie Moran, of whom I wrote recently (and for whom, so far as I am aware, there was no show of solidarity by writers or musicians, and not even a single letter in reply to my piece; how different indeed had her killer, say, been English and called Clegg) was not a victim of "terrorism", though her killing had much in common with so many killings of recent years. The killers crossed the Border to butcher her in her Newry home and under the command of others - on this occasion, her husband, Joseph Moran, and her niece Anita McKeown, a very wicked young trollop indeed, who even paid a £1,000 hit-fee.
She pleaded guilty in the North to conspiracy to murder and so the court never heard the damning evidence against her. She received eight years' imprisonment, served four and is now free. It is perfectly disgusting to contemplate that such a vile and calculating young creature has the rest of her life at liberty before her. I trust the married men of South Down where she lives bear in mind the possible consequences of going the distance with her. Her uncle Joseph did, and then found himself organising the killing of his wife at her behest.
One of the two men commissioned to kill Rose-Marie, Philip Quigley from Dundalk was found not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter. He named in court, as Joseph Moran named in court, another Dundalk man as the main murder culprit, responsible for most of the victim's 37 stab wounds.
Fair trial
I have previously named that young gentleman. I want to see him tried and sentenced to life imprisonment; but I do not want to see his counsel saying that the accused could not receive a fair trial because of newspaper publicity. So we will call this creature Moriarty. Moriarty was arrested by gardai on foot of an extradition warrant from the RUC; that warrant was ultimately ruled to be defective in law because it failed the conditions of section 10 of the Criminal Justice Act, 1984.
The warrant sought Moriarty for murder and conspiracy to murder. Section 10 demands that no person should be arrested (as Moriarty was by gardai) for any other offence but that for which he was first arrested. The initial warrant referred simply to murder; a second warrant added conspiracy to murder. Counsel for Moriarty argued that to use both grounds - murder and conspiracy to murder - was a departure from "fair and proper procedure". The additional charge, if you like, capsized the boat, and the accused man was able to swim free without getting anywhere near a trial.
Extradition warrants
You might well sit there with your jaw hanging open that the term "fair" be applied anywhere near such deliberations, or that no further extradition warrants for this young psychopathic butcher followed. But put aside wonder. Let us be purposefully angry instead. Why is young Moriarty not tried in the Republic for murder under the Criminal Law (Jurisdiction) Act of 1976? It states: "Where a person does in Northern Ireland an act which if done in the State would constitute an offence specified in the Schedule, he shall be guilty of an offence and . . . be liable to the [same] penalty . . . as if he had done the act in the State." Virtually identical provisions exist in the Extradition (European Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism) Act of 1987.
It is surely up to the Attorney General to act on this case. The prospect of the primary killer in this vile and revolting murder remaining free is too unspeakable for words. It is also shaming. We owe it to Rose-Marie and her orphaned son; but most of all, we owe it to ourselves that justice be seen to be done. It certainly has not been so far.