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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