Madam, - It appears that the jury in the Nally case considered the right of private property as absolute and asserted that there is no limit to the amount of lethal force to be used in protecting this right. In effect, this means that the right to human life becomes relative and subservient to the right of private property. This turns traditional morality on its head.
Since the verdict in the first Nally trial there has been an orchestrated political campaign led by politicians and farmers' leaders to replace the respect for human life by an absolutist right of private property. This campaign, together with the blackening of Mr Ward's name by emphasising his past criminal record, should, I believe, be the basis for an appeal by the Ward family and the DPP to superior courts up to and including the European court of Human rights. The memory of Mr Ward deserves no less.
- Yours, etc,
BRENDAN BUTLER, The Moorings, Malahide, Co Dublin.