Time to end the life sentences handed down to families
WHEN is a life sentence not a life sentence? When it’s an Irish life sentence. By law, convicted murderers can apply for parole after serving just 12 years, and while the average time served in prison is 18 years, there is much misery along the way for the families of those whose lives were so brutally cut short.
If a killer applies for parole after 12 years, and every two years thereafter, it can take months of reports and consideration to reach a decision. If that is a rejection of the petition and the killer applies again, it can be as little as 18 months between the refusal and the next appeal. This leaves grieving parents, siblings and partners in an endless limbo of fear that justice will not be served at all.
This situation clearly could be avoided if, as is the case in the UK and other jurisdictions, judges could hand down whole life sentences for the most heinously aggravated murders, such as that for Wayne Couzens, the London police officer who abducted and killed Sarah Everard. After the conviction of Jozef Puska for the murder of Ashling Murphy in Tullamore, presiding Judge, Tony Hunt, lamented the fact that he was not allowed apply such a sentence in Ireland.
Today in this newspaper, the brother of a murder victim and her children makes a compelling case for why the law must change to allow judges set minimum tariffs to be served.
Sharon Whelan and her daughters Zarah and Nadia were murdered in their Windgap, Co. Kilkenny, home on Christmas Day 2008 by postman Brian Hennessy, who then set fire to the house in an attempt to conceal his crime.
Hennessy is due to appear before the parole board this week, and while it is unlikely he will be freed, he has made one successful challenge in the past.
Originally sentenced to three life terms to run consecutively, he instead had that changed to allow them run concurrently – effectively, one life sentence for three murders.
It is easy to understand the unease that permeates every waking hour of life for John Whelan and other members of the family, as he awaits news of the outcome – and no matter what that is, the certain knowledge he will be in the same place two years hence.
Separately today, we hear from the Blair family, who want the name of their son’s killer made public. A teenager when he was convicted, and therefore not named in court reports, he is now 21, and there seems no reason at all why he should continue to hide behind anonymity.
Both cases starkly illustrate some of the failings of our justice system, and both must be addressed.
Until they are, we will continue to make victims of the families left behind, as well as those who died at the hands of evil killers.
IT’S A BLOOMING GOOD SIGN
THE Irish embassy in Paris has asked authorities in the French capital to amend a plaque on the apartment in the Latin Quarter in which James Joyce worked on his masterpiece, Ulysses.
At the behest of the author’s late nephew Stephen, who controlled the estate with an iron fist, Joyce is described as ‘a British writer of Irish descent’.
In truth, Joyce and his work could not be more Irish – as has often been said, from reading Ulysses alone, you could completely reconstruct the Dublin of Bloomsday, 16 June 1906.
The issue is now in the hands of the mayor in the relevant district. We hope that, echoing Molly Bloom’s eternal soliloquy, the answer is: ‘Oui j’ai dit oui je