Who is responsible for the cost of a life of crime?
Gardai are not the villains and the State is also not to blame for the mayhem inflicted on Dublin by gangs, writes Eilis O’Hanlon
REGARDLESS of how David Byrne may have lived his life, pictures of the aftermath of his murder at Dublin’s Regency Hotel three years ago, as he lay in the reception in a pool of blood after being shot six times in the head and body by gunmen dressed in Garda Emergency Response Unit-style uniforms, still have the power to shock.
No parent should ever have to see that, and it’s understandable that Byrne’s surviving family are now distraught at the collapse of the trial on murder and firearms offences of 26-year-old Patrick Hutch at the Special Criminal Court.
Hutch was not accused of being the actual killer, but it was claimed that he was the man photographed running from the hotel, carrying a gun while pulling off a female wig.
It was the State’s contention that he was part of a “shared intention” to murder the dead man in what senior prosecutor Sean Gillane told the court was a “resourced, carefully planned, targeted attack” carried out “with perfect callousness to a prone man”.
That trial began last year, but heard only four days of evidence. It finally collapsed for good last week when it was decided that “the prosecution is not in a position to lead evidence on a number of evidential topics” due mainly to the death last year of the leading investigating detective.
Patrick Hutch is now expected to leave the country, if he hasn’t already, for his own safety, meaning that no one is now facing charges for David Byrne’s murder, and, without fresh evidence, it’s unlikely that anyone will again.
The man in the flat cap pictured running away from the scene alongside the man in a wig was Kevin Murray, a former republican prisoner from Northern Ireland. The gardai obtained a European Arrest Warrant for his extradition in 2016, but it couldn’t be completed as he was deemed too ill to stand trial.
He died the following August at his home of motor neurone disease.
Another of the murder gang was also later killed in the feud, so certainly no one is in jail, hence the family’s dismay. “All I want is justice for my child,” said Byrne’s mother, Sadie, afterwards.
It does seems absurd that the death of the lead detective should be sufficient to collapse a major criminal trial which has been some years in the preparation, however mysterious the circumstances.
Detective Superintendent Colm Fox was found dead of a single gunshot wound at Ballymun Garda Station last February; the Garda Ombudsman is conducting an investigation but foul play is not suspected, though he did leave notes suggesting that mistakes may have been made in the investigation. That was sufficient to cast a shadow on the trial, because, as a source said, Patrick Hutch’s defence team was “not in a position to examine or cross-examine [Colm Fox] on what he meant”.
A person can only be convicted if it’s “beyond rea- sonable doubt”, but that has never been clearly defined. As DCU criminal law lecturer Dr Yvonne Daly explained after the trial of Graham Dwyer for the murder of Elaine O’Hara: “Proof beyond reasonable doubt is not the same as proof beyond a shadow of a doubt.”
The issue then is whether it’s reasonable that, because the lead detective left a note before his death suggesting he’d made a “grave error of judgment”, despite an investigation finding no evidence that he’d done so, no one can be held accountable?
There may be complex legal arguments over that, but to the layperson it seems bizarre.
Innocent until proven guilty is an important cornerstone of Irish justice, but so is protecting the public from the scourge of gangland violence.
The victim’s family de- serve every human sympathy, but some of the things which they said after the trial collapsed were hugely irresponsible. In court they said the gardai were “afraid of the Hutches”. Outside, they held up placards going further. One read: “Where were the garda... when David Byrne was murdered?” Below: “No help from 999 calls. Who gave the go-ahead for the Regency massacre?”
There is a plethora of similarly absurd and offensive conspiracy theories floating around on social media which seek to blame innocent parties for the mayhem inflicted on Dublin by criminal gangs.
The gardai are not the villains of this piece, and no reasonable person could possibly argue that they were. David Byrne’s family say the collapse of the trial proves that there is “no justice in Ireland”, but justice is rarely neat and tidy in the milieu in which he chose to spend his life.
The State can only clean up the mess; its efforts to do so don’t make for a perfect world, but it’s better than the one he and his cohorts helped create.
David’s mother stoutly denies that her dead son was a gangster, but then she also insists that her other son, Liam, is not a gangster either, when it’s well known that he is a high-ranking member of the Kinahan gang, a chunk of whose assets was seized last year by the Criminal Assets Bureau on that basis. A mother will always defend her children, but all the evidence is that David Byrne was also up to his neck in the gangland swamp. Have the victims of his crimes ever got justice? Did drug addicts whose lives have been ruined by the trade he facilitated get justice?
Since the Regency, 18 people have died, some of whom merely happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. There could have been dozens more murders but for the gardai’s prompt action.
The Byrnes swear they’re just an ordinary family, and that they don’t want the feud to continue. “Who wants to live like this?” says Sadie.
The answer, unfortunately, is people like her late son and his associates. The State doesn’t want it. The gardai don’t want it. People in Dublin don’t want it. To be honest, most people struggle to keep up with who’s on what side.
The only people with the power to end it are those keeping it going. The real injustice is that they show no sign of doing so. There’s too much money and pride involved.
Garda Assistant Commissioner Pat Leahy thinks all this could still be going on in 20 years’ time. You can’t protect everyone, least of all former brothers in arms who’ve fallen out over the proceeds of crime, like characters in some lurid TV mafia drama.
At some point they need to take responsibility for what they’ve created, instead of blaming everyone else for their tragedies.
‘Have addicts whose lives were ruined by drugs ever got justice?’