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Thread: Ireland

  1. #1
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Ireland

    When Irish criminals knew they'd 'swing' for the very worst crimes

    Behind the walls of Mountjoy Prison lie the remains of 29 people executed by the State for murder between 1923 and 1954. Each died by the same legal process - trial at Green Street courthouse Dublin - and the exact same method - death by hanging in Mountjoy Prison's execution chamber. But their deaths were a historical accident and today the 29 remain buried in the prison in unmarked graves, mute memorials to an abandoned form of punishment.

    When the Irish State was being established in 1922, discussions took place regarding its new legal framework. At first it was thought that capital punishment, so closely associated with British rule, would be abolished. However, with the outbreak of the Civil War the Free State government thought it unsafe, on political security grounds, to get rid of the ultimate penalty.

    Though there are patterns evident in the 29 stories - all but 1 were men; most were convicted of 'rural' murders, with just 6 being carried out in what can be described as urban centres; 9 of the 29 were involved in what would have been regarded at the time by general society as 'illicit' or 'immoral relationships' - each of the 29 stories is different, distinct, individual. They are human-interest stories, written tragically large.

    Bernard Kirwan

    Although today his name is largely unknown, the most 'famous' of the executed is Bernard Kirwan. His renown comes largely from being the subject of Brendan Behan's play The Quare Fellow. The Bernard Kirwan story started in November 1941, when his brother Laurence disappeared from their Offaly farmhouse. Since Bernard's recent return from serving a term of Penal Servitude for armed robbery - Kirwan was one of just 3 of the 29 who had previously committed a serious crime - there had been bad blood between them.

    The unidentifiable remains of a dissected body discovered in a bog near the Kirwan farm led to his arrest.

    During Bernard's 17-day trial, by far the longest of the 29 with some only lasting half a day, the prosecution proved that Laurence was dead, that the remains found in the bog were his and, finally, that Bernard had inflicted the violence that led to his death.

    The jury took more than 3 hours to return its guilty verdict. With Kirwan now sentenced to death, Behan saw the dramatic possibilities and began to assemble material for what would ultimately be The Quare Fellow.

    'James Herbert Lehman'

    The strangest of the executed was 'James Herbert Lehman'. 'Lehman' was believed to have been Canadian - the only 'non-national' among the executed - and he was convicted of poisoning his Irish wife Peg in 1944 when she was pregnant with their third child.

    A compulsive, most probably pathological liar, 'Lehman' had been known variously as Leighman, Haines, McCabe, Feeley, Martin and Richman. Depending on who he talked to, he was born in 1899 or 1905 in Montreal, Belfast, Washington DC or Minnesota. After 'Lehman's' trial further information was learned about him from American sources including that he had served five terms in American prisons for theft and larceny and that he had been married 3 times.

    Daniel Doherty

    The defence of insanity was recognised in court and had been put forward in a small number of the cases. However, while many of the hanged were regarded as 'abnormal' in their manner and with low intellectual capacity, there was only one who put a strong guilty-but-insane defence. It was the case of married man Daniel Doherty, from Malin Head, Co Donegal, who was convicted of killing his pregnant cousin, Hannah Doherty - he was allegedly the father of the child. State pathologist Dr McGrath described it as an 'unusually savage' killing with Hannah receiving 16 wounds to the head.

    4 people testified that if Daniel had killed Hannah he had done so in a fit of insanity.

    2 were prison staff whose experience lent some weight to their opinion. The others were the head of Letterkenny Mental Hospital and Dr Dunne, the medical superintendent of Grangegorman Mental Hospital. Despite the comprehensiveness of the evidence, the jury disagreed and Doherty was found guilty and executed.

    William O'Neill

    Just a handful of the 29 executed were found guilty of killing a person they had no personal relationship with. Most had killed friends, co-workers, brothers, wives, husbands. One who had no connection with his victim was William O'Neill.

    In 1927 at 18 or 19 years of age he was found guilty of murdering 84-year-old Peggy O'Farrell. He had sexually assaulted and suffocated her to death outside her cottage in Glenmalure valley, Co Wicklow.

    O'Neill was linked to the murder by a watch and money stolen from the scene. After he was found guilty and sentenced to death, the government asked the medical officer of Mountjoy for his opinion on the prisoner.

    In his letter that would help the government decide whether to reprieve the young man, the medical officer wrote that O'Neill's "moral sense is blunted and he lies without cunning".

    Reading through the trial transcripts, depositions, newspaper articles, garda and prison reports it is hard not to conclude that in the great majority of cases the correct verdict was reached. But in a few doubts remain about the convictions. In 1931, David O'Shea from Cork was convicted on dubious garda evidence. The Harry Gleeson case in Tipperary has always been regarded as a miscarriage of justice.

    It is these cases which forcefully remind one that the greatest argument against capital punishment is and will always be that once that sentence is carried out there is, of course, no going back.

    Hanged for Murder: Irish State Executions by Tim Carey, published this week by The Collins Press, price 14.99 euros.

    (Source: The Irish Independent)
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  2. #2
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JimKay's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Heidi View Post
    The Harry Gleeson case in Tipperary has always been regarded as a miscarriage of justice.
    Oh, Heidi, you knew I couldn't resist....

    The new evidence that could exonerate Harry Gleeson

    The firearms register, a log book recording when ammunition was bought, was not produced at Gleeson's trial, despite a request by the trial judge.

    The register typically included the date, quantity and type of ammunition sold as well as the name, address and firearm certificate number of the buyer.

    It was the prosecution's case that Mary McCarthy was shot with a no 5 shot or cartridge.

    The prosecution did not produce the register but relied on a receipt from Feehan's hardware store to prove that Gleeson's uncle, John Caesar, bought cartridges on October 3, 1940 – weeks before Ms McCarthy's death.

    However, the firearms register – discovered by the Justice for Harry Gleeson group (JfHG) – shows no record of Gleeson's uncle buying cartridges on October 3, raising doubts about the authenticity of the receipt.

    When the firearms register was recovered, it showed that Mr Caesar had bought no 4 cartridges in July 1940, undermining the prosecutions claims that Gleeson killed Ms McCarthy with a no 5 cartridge.

    Q Time of death

    Ms McCarthy's body temperature was recorded at the scene, four hours after Gleeson reported to gardai, at 96F.

    The warmth of the body suggested that the mum of seven had been killed that morning as opposed to the previous evening when the prosecution claimed Gleeson murdered her. A new pathologist's report has been ordered in relation to Ms McCarthy's body temperature.

    Q Dying Declaration

    Last year, a nurse who worked at a Dublin hospital between 1988 and 1990 signed an affidavit (court statement) recalling a conversation she had with the murdered woman's daughter. In the affidavit, the nurse said Mary McCarthy Jnr told her: "I saw my own mother shot on the kitchen floor and an innocent man died."

    Q the Alibi

    A DVD recording of a man who lived on the same farm as Harry Gleeson has been handed to the Department of Justice.

    According to the JfHG, the recording provides Gleeson with an alibi for the time the prosecution claimed the fatal shots were fired.

    http://www.independent.ie/irish-news...-29563251.html




    Murder at Marlhill, New Inn, Tipperary

    The Office of the Irish Attorney General has appointed a leading Senior Counsel to independently review the conviction of Tipperary farmer Harry Gleeson, 72 years after he was hanged. Justice Minister Alan Shatter has sanctioned a cold-case review following a request by Gleeson’s surviving relatives and friends, who have amassed what is believed to be new forensic evidence and which they believe will now clear Gleeson’s name.

    Harry Gleeson, a bachelor, whose favourite pastime was hare coursing, was found guilty of the murder of his neighbour, Mary (Moll) McCarthy, whose mutilated body he found on November 21st 1940, in a remote spot on his uncle’s farm near New Inn, Co Tipperary. Miss McCarthy had been shot twice, once in the face by her assailant or assailants .

    A fresh pathologist’s report has been conducted which may undermine the prosecution’s case regarding the timing of the death of Miss McCarthy, who was decried from the altar by a local priest, because she was an unmarried mother.

    The Justice for Harry Gleeson Group based at Dublin’s Griffith College, turned to the Irish Innocence Project, part of the global wrongful conviction organisation, to help strengthen its exoneration case. The Innocence Project, wrote to Mr Shatter last year seeking a pardon after reviewing Gleeson’s case.
    Dean of Law at Griffith and director of the Irish Innocence Project Barrister David Langwallner stated that he believed the new evidence was now sufficient to establish that the Harry Gleeson case was a miscarriage of justice.

    Previously this story was documented by the late broadcaster and journalist Cathal O’Shannon (1928 – 2011) in a TV series entitled “Thou Shalt Not Kill, ” back in 1995.

    Henry “Harry” Gleeson was born in 1897 at the family homestead at Galbertstown Lower, Holycross, Thurles, Co. Tipperary. He was the ninth child of farmer Thomas Gleeson and Catherine (Maiden name Caesar). His parents were married in 1883 and had a family of 12 children. Harry went to work for his mother’s brother John Caesar, at Marlhill Farm, near New Inn. Harry’s younger brother Patrick would ultimately inherit Marlhill after John Caeser’s death, aged 83, in 1951.

    According to a fictional Novel The Dead Eight by Carlo Gebler, Moll McCarthy’s story truly begins with her mother, who was reportedly a woman of ‘ill repute,’ and who sold sex to improve her impoverished lifestyle during a sojourn in Dublin city. Moll, her daughter, lived in a children’s home here in Thurles for the first sixteen years of life and was never acquainted with her actual father. Carlo Gebler paints Moll, like her mother, as somewhat of a promiscuous woman, even by the then standards of her time, having had numerous relationships with local men, both married and unmarried and also used these encounters to gain basic economic support, e.g. Unexplained Loads of Turf, Bags of Spuds, Groceries paid for at local shop etc..

    “Foxy Moll’s” believed demise appears to have begun with a new discreet tryst with one Sergeant Anthony Daly, a married man, almost immediately upon his arrival to a new post at New Inn Garda station early in 1940. According to the novel Moll had been previously in a relationship with a local IRA activist, one Mr Johnny (JJ) Spink. He reportedly had possibly fathered her seventh and last child, latter who died as an infant and as with possibly previously relationships, this pregnancy appears to have ended her affair, due possibly to the scandal which almost certainly would have surrounded it.

    Sergeant Daly’s then role in the Gardaí was to find and eradicate the remnants of the IRA who were still active in the Tipperary area. The Sergeant had been stationed at several locations over the course of his career and was notorious for the rough justice he had previously handed out. His now relationship with Moll presented a threat to Spink, who possibly feared that pillow talk might be passed on about the latter’s activities, thus this may have provided a motive for murder.

    The novel suggests that Spink and two of his IRA associated brought Moll to a deserted house near Marlhill on the Wednesday evening, got her drunk, shot her and then planted her body where they knew Harry Gleeson would stumble on it the following morning. Spink then may have blackmailed Sergeant Daly, threatening to reveal his relationship with the deceased unless Sergeant Daly was prepared to frame Harry Gleeson. Sergeant Daly stands accused of coaching one of Moll’s sons to say that Harry Gleeson was the father of Moll’s last child and the whole case now pointed to Gleeson as having a motive for murder.

    Early in 1941, Harry “Badger” Gleeson was convicted of Moll McCarthy’s murder. It appeared that justice had been done however everyone in New Inn was aware that Gleeson had never had a relationship with Moll McCarthy, they also knew that Moll McCarthy never had a child by him. Harry also had a cast iron alibi in the company of others. Her killer, as was also widely speculated on and was more than likely the father of her seventh child.

    British Hangman Albert Pierrepoint (1905 – 1992) executed Harry Gleeson in Mountjoy jail in April 1941. Pierrepoint executed at least 433 men and 17 women during his time as a hangman.

    A decision on a pardon, based on new believed evidence, is expected to be made within a matter of months.

    http://www.thurles.info/2013/09/09/m...inn-tipperary/

  3. #3
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Mary Duffy, who was raped and murdered by Shaw and Evans.


    Geoffrey Evans and John Shaw are taken to a court hearing after their arrest in 1976.


    A lifetime behind bars - the killers who are our longest-serving prisoners

    John Shaw has spent the past 42 years in jail and is Ireland's longest-serving prisoner.

    He was arrested in 1976 with his accomplice Geoffrey Evans for the torture, rape and murder of two young women.

    The two Englishmen, who had several criminal convictions in England, set in motion an evil plan to rape and murder young women in Ireland.

    They abducted Dublin woman Elizabeth Plunkett (22) in Brittas Bay, Co Wicklow in 1976. They raped and murdered her and dumped her body in the sea. Her remains were found later on the Wexford coast.

    A month after their first killing, they abducted Mary Duffy (24) in Castlebar, Co Mayo. She was held captive in a tent and raped repeatedly before being murdered. They dumped her body in Lough Inagh in Co Galway.

    The killers were arrested in a stolen car in Salthill, Co Galway, and both were later convicted of murder in 1978 and given life sentences.

    Shaw reportedly told a detective they had planned to rape and kill a woman every month.

    Evans died behind bars in 2012.

    Jimmy Ennis holds the record for the longest time spent in prison for a crime.

    He spent 52 years in prison. He was 35 when convicted of murdering a farmer during a robbery in 1964.

    He was released two years ago. He always refused to apply for release, explaining that he preferred to continue working in the Shelton Abbey prison garden. He did odd jobs for locals, returning to prison at night.

    Ennis, a farm labourer from Co Kildare, was carrying out a burglary at the home of former employer George Applebe at Watergrasshill, Co Cork, when he struck him with a iron bar and killed him.

    The judge said he would have imposed a death sentence but it was abolished by the Criminal Justice Act 1964.

    https://www.independent.ie/irish-new...-36741405.html

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