Time to turn the screw on these repeat offenders..
Our flawed legal system is really at sixes and sevens.
That is the only way to explain how Alan Harte, the man who tortured the Quinn Industrial Holding director, was not behind bars – seeing as he had 180 previous convictions.
A gagging order had been put in place to protect the identity of this unhinged kidnapper who was the ringleader in the attack.
Alan Harte could be identified only as YZ during the court case, because he was due to next face trial for killing a man in his 60s.
The High Court only lifted the order this week because the Director of Public Prosecutions dropped the murder charges.
Looking at how Harte had clocked up so many convictions, the question is: why don’t we have a “three-strikes and you’re out” law here?
It has been implemented in almost 30 US states since 1994.
Our Government needs to make a hard U-turn with the soft sentence culture prevalent in Irish courts.
America’s habitual offender laws, commonly referred to as a threestrikes law, would frighten the bejaysus out of our career criminals.
Anybody deemed a “persistent offender” in LA automatically receives a mandatory sentence of 25 years to life if they chalk up three serious or violent felonies.
Irish judges need the equivalent of a Monopoly cue card that reads “Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect €200” to deal with the Hartes of this world.
I used to believe in an eye for an eye. But I had my own eyes opened after befriending a happy couple based in Connemara who both inexplicably ended up on death row for different murders they did not commit.
American activist and bestselling author Sunny Jacobs was wrongly convicted, along with her first husband, of murdering a Florida highway patrol officer in 1976.
It took 17 years before Sunny, played by Susan Sarandon in a TV movie called The Exonerated, was vindicated.
But her partner was not so lucky. He suffered a horrible death in a botched execution by electric chair in 1990.
Sunny was robbed of the chance to raise her children.
Her new husband Peter Pringle was the last man in Ireland to be handed down a death sentence and later found to be innocent of the crime when released in 1995.
Peter, whose son
Even one miscarriage of justice is too high a price to pay
Criminals won’t be so trigger happy if we change the rules
Thomas is an Independent TD for Donegal, spent 15 years behind bars for the murder of a garda in 1980.
But he was lucky not to have been hanged as ordered by the judge. Capital punishment was only abolished in 1990.
Even one such miscarriage of justice resulting in the loss of life is too high a price to pay.
It would be unforgivable for Ireland to end up with innocent blood on its hands.
Yet, it can also potentially happen every time a cold-blooded killer gets released early.
A life sentence for murder should mean just that – a whole life term.
The average amount of time spent behind bars for a life sentence in Ireland is 17.5 years, according to the 2018 Parole Board’s annual report. We need tougher sentences for rapists, and paedophiles should be chemically castrated.
Albert Einstein said, “Life is just a game. First you have to learn the rules of the game, and then play it better than anyone else.”
Criminals wouldn’t be so trigger happy if we changed these rules.