The brother of a man fatally shot by a family member, who opened fire on him with a submachine gun in his own front garden, has said his sibling was a “decent, honest man” who paid the ultimate price for meeting people involved in the drugs trade.
The court heard during Friday’s sentence hearing for gunman Christopher Devine, who was sentenced to the mandatory term of life imprisonment, that his brother-in-law through marriage, Michael Tormey, was “never in his life involved in criminal activity” and had made “a serious error of judgment” getting involved with “these people” but was only around them for “a short period”.
In his victim impact statement, Patrick Tormey, the younger brother of the deceased man, told the Central Criminal Court that one of the most hurtful aspects of the trial was listening to the details of how his sibling was “coldly murdered” and that “some of the details revealed” were “hard to accept”.
Mr Tormey said his brother was not a criminal but “a good, decent man with an honest and happy attitude towards life”.
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“When he met these people, it was the beginning of the end for Michael and he paid the ultimate price with his life,” Mr Tormey said.
Earlier this month, a jury convicted Devine, a father of six, of murder, finding he was not suffering from a “substance-induced psychotic disorder” after “shovelling” cocaine into himself when he opened fire on Mr Tormey.
Devine told gardaí in his interviews that he stood best man for Mr Tormey and that he and the deceased had been engaged in drug-related activity by “shifting a bit of stuff for lads”.
The defendant went on to say “coke or whatever” when asked to elaborate by officers during his interviews. However, he said that he and Mr Tormey had “kind of got out” of the “drugs business”.
Devine (44), with an address at Convent Lawns, Kylemore Road, Ballyfermot in Dublin, 10 had pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to the manslaughter of Mr Tormey (49) at Thomond Road in Ballyfermot in the early hours of January 9th, 2022.
Mr Tormey was struck by five bullets in his front garden. They went through his body, causing bleeding, rib fractures and partial lung collapse.
Defence counsel Aoife O’Leary BL told the court on Friday that her client had asked her to convey his remorse and regret about his actions that night.
Handing down the mandatory term of life imprisonment for murder, Ms Justice Melanie Greally said the victim impact statement conveyed the “huge devastation” caused to so many lives from Devine’s “brutal act of murder”.
The judge described it as an “act of immense brutality and treachery conducted in Mr Tormey’s home”. She said the only benefit that comes from “the cold process of a murder trial” is when the family of the deceased “have a voice” and are able to “set the record straight” after a conviction is returned.
“That’s been done by Patrick Tormey and that is the only satisfaction that can come,” said the judge, adding that the court conveyed its sympathies “to all those affected by this horrible death”.
The jury panel had rejected Devine’s defence that he should be found guilty of manslaughter because he had a mental disorder that would have diminished his capacity to control himself.
They also rejected his contention that he was so intoxicated from taking “industrial quantities” of cocaine, combined with large amounts of alcohol that he couldn’t have formed an intention to kill or cause serious injury.
Instead the jurors accepted the case argued by Garret Baker SC, for the Director of Public Prosecutions, that Devine’s mind was functioning as he had acted deliberately in the build-up to, as well as in the aftermath of, the killing of Mr Tormey.
The trial heard evidence that Devine drove to the victim’s home and shot him five times before walking back to his car and spinning the wheels as he made his escape. Devine repeatedly denied to gardaí that he murdered Mr Tormey, while the weapon used – a MP5 pattern submachine gun – was never recovered.
The court heard that Devine has no psychiatric history and had never taken any psychiatric medication.
