The ACQUITTAL of Colm Murphy on charges of conspiracy to cause an explosion in Omagh in August 1998 concludes an 11-year legal process. It effectively brings to an ignominious end the State’s attempt to secure a successful criminal conviction for direct involvement in an atrocity which resulted in the deaths of 29 people including the mother of unborn twins. Two hundred others sustained serious injuries.
The attempted prosecution of Mr Murphy included no less than five sets of legal proceedings and one related prosecution. He was first arrested in 1999 and questioned in Monaghan Garda station by three teams of two detective gardaí. During one such interview he was alleged to have admitted that he knew a mobile phone he lent to another man would be used when bombs were being moved in Northern Ireland.
He was charged with conspiracy and IRA membership in 2001 and convicted in 2002 but the Court of Criminal Appeal overturned this conviction in 2005. The court was sharply critical of the fact that Garda notes of one of the interviews with him had been fabricated. The two gardaí involved, John Fahy and Liam Donnelly, who has since died, were subsequently prosecuted for forgery and perjury but were acquitted.
Mr Murphy sought to prevent his retrial proceeding in both the High Court and the Supreme Court but the latter ruled last year that he should be tried again. That trial began on January 12th and ended this week with the Special Criminal Court finding that the fabrication of the Garda interview notes, which had never been explained by the gardaí involved, had tainted all the interview evidence.
The result is that the relatives of those killed and injured have endured more than a decade of criminal proceedings without the satisfaction of seeing anyone brought to direct account for the atrocity and for their suffering. From their perspective, it adds the gravest insult to the ultimate injury.
The key factor in this debacle is the fabrication of interview notes and the failure of the two members of the Garda Síochána involved to explain what happened and why. It is possible that such an explanation, had it been rendered, might have helped to exonerate the other four interviewing gardaí from any associated suspicion. Without such an exoneration a doubt remained and, as the Special Criminal Court stated, Mr Murphy was entitled to the benefit of that doubt though the court made no finding concerning the credibility of the other interviewing gardaí.
The lessons of these events must be learned. There can be no tolerance in the Garda Síochána of the fabrication of evidence no matter how convinced an individual garda is of the guilt of a suspect. No matter how heinous the crime, no matter how intense public revulsion at it, investigations must be carried out methodically, thoroughly and without recourse to short-cuts. Anything less may not only lead to a failed prosecution but to a loss of public confidence in the Garda and the criminal justice system itself.