GREGORY MURPHY: Until ill health came to affect him recently, Gregory Murphy, who died on August 7th aged 53, was rarely absent from either the Circuit or Central Criminal courts, usually as a defence counsel.
He was born in Dublin on September 27th, 1948, the fifth of six children. His father was a Garda superintendent, and his mother ran a newsagent's shop in Terenure.
He attended Rockwell College in Co Tipperary, and then Trinity College, where he studied legal science, graduating in 1972. He also attended the King's Inns, and was called to the Bar in 1973.
He was in Trinity College during the student protest movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and, as a gifted public speaker, was a prominent member of that movement. He was chairman of the Dublin University Fabian Society, which changed its name to the Socialist Society at this time. His long, curly red hair and red beard, as well as his oratory, made him a conspicuous figure at the frequent student meetings. He was also part of the wider social protests of the time, especially those of the Dublin Housing Action Committee.
His debating skills were also put to full use in college societies, and he was a medallist both of the college's Law Society and its Historical Society. He was also auditor of the Law Society, and represented this society at the Observer Mace student debating competition in Britain, which he won. He also won the Bencher's trophy in the King's Inns.
He worked as a casual sub-editor on the foreign desk in The Irish Times in his early years at the Bar, until 1976.
"He would come in at 5.30 or 6 p.m. - later than the rest of us - straight from the Law Library in his pinstripe suit, and do his shift," recalled a colleague. "He was unbelievably good and unbelievably fast, and would get the whole page done before any of us. He was in the pub no later than 9.15, while we were still finishing. It was deeply annoying that someone was doing this at the end of a day's work!"
This journalistic colleague is one of the many people who recall his capacity for insulting people to their faces, combined with great kindness and generosity. "No man has been so loved in spite of the fact that he insulted everyone around him. In a way you thought, when he insulted you, if this is the worst people can think of me, it's not that bad. But if you were sick he would be the first to a hospital with a large bottle, and I know of many instances where he helped people financially." He ceased work at The Irish Times when his legal career became established. He devilled with Patrick MacEntee, then emerging as one of the leading criminal barristers, and, when MacEntee became a senior counsel, sometimes worked as his junior.
He was called to the Inner Temple in London in 1987, and became a senior counsel in 1991. He became a Bencher of the King's Inns in 1996. He was a member of the Bar Council for 10 years, and also a member of the Council of the King's Inns.
He was dedicated to criminal law, then seen as the "lower" end of the profession, and one former judge recalls a loud disapproving "humph" from Gregory Murphy during the launch of a book on criminal law by then Chief Justice Tom O'Higgins, when he said: "There's not one of us who at one time or other did not have to take a criminal brief."
"He took the independence of the Bar extremely seriously," said a colleague. "He didn't care who he offended when he defended someone. He felt that the job of a barrister was to stand between the individual and the machine of the State."
In more recent years he also worked as a prosecutor, and among the cases he successfully prosecuted was the David Murphy wife-murder case, the first case where children's evidence was taken via video link.
Gregory Murphy had little time for many of the leisure activities associated with the Bar, and was a stranger to the golfing circuit and the rugby pitch. He enjoyed opera and collected paintings, but also, according to a friend, "loved the codology of truly, truly bad Irish folk music. It would have him rolling around." He also had a deep attachment to Kerry, where his father's family came from, and Greece, where he visited annually .
Though in some ways an iconoclast, he also loved the rituals associated with the Bar, and often defended its more arcane aspects. "He loved that English club stuff," said another colleague.
He is survived by wife Jean Pasley, sisters Brid and Dorothy, and his brother Thomas.
Gregory Murphy: born 1948, died, August 2002