Free the murderers and jail the witnesses

limerick | crime and justice | news report Tuesday August 01, 2006 13:32 by Seán Ryan

A young mother and a young man were sentenced yesterday, by Judge Carroll Moran for perjury. They'd been witnesses in a murder trial who were threatened and then refused protection and subsequently altered their testimonies.

The notion of justice has once again been made a mockery of by the Courts in Limerick.

In August of 2001 Eric Leamy was stabbed to death. Liam Keane walked away from the Central Criminal Court in 2003 after key witnesses retracted statements originally given to Gardaí, by perjuring themselves on the witness stands.

It emerged that these witnesses had been intimidated and that the Gardaí and State had been unable or unwilling to provide protection for them. They were threatened with jail themselves as an alternative to offering protection.

The feud in Limerick between the Keanes and the Ryans (no relations to myself) is a long running one and is one of many in Limerick, that at one point has seen scores of Gardaí including the armed ERU (Emergency Response Unit) surround Kings Island (The Island Field - as it is more commonly known) taking registration numbers and details of those who entered and departed, for a number of weeks (a very expensive operation that hasn't had the slightest effect on crime). The Keanes are from the Island Field. This community has always been a community under seige, indeed this goes back to the Seige of Limerick itself, where people from the Island smuggled food to Sarsfield and his army who were holed up behind the Walls of Limerick and the Stronghold - King Johns Castle. The people of the Island became known as 'Soda Cakes' after this.

The Ryans on the other hand are Based in Kileely, which is within pissing distance of the Island. Supporters of both parties are strewn around these two areas. Ballynanty, Thomondgate and Moyross. There are no defined battle lines and combattants often live close to each other. Hardly a night goes by without at least somebody's windows being shot in. It is an incredibly rare sight to see the Gardaí on foot patrol in any of these areas, particularly Moyross.

Anyway, yesterday Judge Carroll Moran handed down community service sentences to the two scared and defenceless witnesses that had not been offered the protection that the State is supposed to guarantee to its citizens.

David Murphy from Lee Estate (in the Island Field) was given 150 hours community service.

Amanda McNamara a young mother from St. Mary's Park (also in the Island Field) was given 100 hours of community service. Judge Moran told her that a sentence of 6 months would have been appropriate, in that her lack of testimony had collapsed an important trial.

This is the quality of Irish justice. Victims are labelled criminals and punished instead of the criminals who hold our communities to ransom and those who allow it to happen, ie the inJustice System and the Government. In other words: Those who are elected to and those who are paid to provide community service, force victims of crime to do it in their stead.

As a side note - even Limerick Prison is segregated. Members of each feuding gang are kept in seperate wings. However violence routinely occurs nonetheless.

Related Link:
http://www.rte.ie/news/2006/0731/mcnamaraa.html (RTE gets Amanda's address wrong - not that this matters to them.)