A Garda sergeant has been charged with unlawfully disclosing the contents of a report into a case in which homeless drug addict Dean Lyons was wrongfully charged with a double murder he did not commit.
Det Sgt Robert McNulty, Rathfarnham, Dublin, appeared before Dublin District Court yesterday afternoon.
He was charged with unlawfully disclosing the contents of a draft report into the Dean Lyons affair. The report was compiled after an inquiry chaired by George Birmingham SC under the Commissions of Investigations Act, 2004.
Sgt McNulty was remanded on bail until November 23rd to appear before Judge Cormac Dunne at Dublin District Court.
The charges relate to a story which appeared in the Evening Herald newspaper in August 2006. The paper revealed the findings of Mr Birmingham's draft report, the final version of which was not due for publication until a month later.
The journalist who wrote the story, Mick McCaffrey, now of the Sunday Tribune, will not face charges in relation to his role in the matter.
If convicted, Sgt McNulty faces a term of imprisonment of up to five years and/or a €300,000 fine.
The case relates to the double murder of psychiatric patients Sylvia Shiels and Mary Callinan in March 1997. They were found stabbed to death in their beds in sheltered accommodation at Grangegorman.
Mr Lyons was arrested and questioned about the killings. He was later wrongfully charged after making a "confession" to gardaí. Sgt McNulty was involved in the Garda investigation of Mr Lyons.
Charges against Mr Lyons were dropped in 1998 shortly after another man, Mark Nash, admitted to the murders.
Nash, who was imprisoned separately for the murder of a couple in Roscommon in August 1997, later withdrew his confession to the Grangegorman murders and was never charged.
Mr Birmingham was asked by the Government to investigate the circumstances under which Mr Lyons was charged.
He concluded that Mr Lyons, now deceased, had not been ill-treated by gardaí and there had been no attempt to frame him. However, his report criticised gardaí over incomplete interview records, which could have led to a miscarriage of justice.
