When Justice Comes

I shared a platform with Frank McBrearty Jnr last week. He was in Dublin to speak against the introduction of Anti Social Behaviour Orders in Ireland. When I heard that he was speaking before me, I knew that he’d be an impossible act to follow. And so it proved.

It is hard – no, to repeat the word, it is impossible – for any ordinary person, who has led a typically sheltered life, to imagine the nightmare he was forced to endure, at the hands of the Gardai in Donegal.
Most people will be familiar with the bones of the case. A man, Richie Barron, was found dead by the side of the road in Donegal in October of 1996. Instead of responding quickly, preserving the scene, assuming the obvious – that he had been the victim of a hit and run accident – and investigating the incident thoroughly, the Gardai involved decided that Frank McBrearty and Michael McConnell [pictured above] should be arrested, charged and convicted of murdering the unfortunate Barron.
Why they decided this remains a mystery. What is certain is this: from the outset, the investigating Gardai were hell bent on convicting McBrearty and McConnell of murder, irrespective of the fact that the evidence pointed towards something much more prosaic. And they went about doing so in the most appalling way imaginable. The Morris Report confirms the shocking truth of Garda corruption in Donegal.
To begin with, work practices were abysmally shoddy and inept. There was a degree of complacency on the part of management within the local force, which amounted to outright dereliction of duty. And there was a mood among Gardai on the ground, that they were – and perhaps still are – answerable to no one, not even their superiors.
But the scandal in this case ran far deeper than all of that. Clearly, the investigating Gardai determined that they were going to get a conviction. And they decided that McBrearty and McConnell fitted the bill well enough as suspects that they would torture them, humiliate them, make their lives – and the lives of their families – completely unbearable, lie, fabricate evidence, trump up charges and summonses on the slightest pretext, and generally behave as if it was their god given right to act as judge, jury and executioners over the lives of two innocent people.
Now, all of this was bad enough. But what is equally scandalous is the fact that Frank McBrearty has been treated with such grotesque inhumanity by the agencies of the State who might have spared him even a small part of the degradation and cruelty inflicted on him as a result of the Garda witch-hunt.
I couldn’t believe it when I read that the State had refused to award him his costs in the Morris Tribunal. This is a man who has been subjected to the ultimate Kafka-esque nightmare, courtesy of the Irish State. For him to be fully vindicated, it was necessary to launch a tribunal of inquiry. And now, he was being told that he would have to take his chances in relation to the legal costs incurred, for representation at that self same tribunal?
It was Michael McDowell who made this call on behalf of the people of Ireland. The same Michael McDowell who had been Attorney General when the decision was made to drop the charge of murder against Frank McBrearty – and who therefore knew that there was no remaining belief that he was guilty, if indeed there ever had been. And the same Michael McDowell who is currently attempting to give draconian additional powers to the Gardai under the new Criminal Justice Bill, via – among other things – the introduction of ASBOs and On The Spot Fines.
When I listened to Frank McBrearty speak at the anti-ASBO rally, I knew that there was very little that I could say that would even remotely match the eloquence of his contribution. How could any decent, sensible, intelligent, right-thinking person decide to give such sweeping additional powers to the Gardai, just at that moment when the full criminal extent of the horrific levels of corruption within the force have been revealed?
Frank McBrearty bore direct personal witness to the sheer, breath-taking arrogance – not to mention the vile, self-serving opportunism – of that decision. People should listen to him, while there is time, and act accordingly. We can stop the forward march of Big Brother. But only if we act quickly enough.
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