THE SUPREME Court has unanimously dismissed claims by convicted murderers Peter Whelan and Paul Lynch that the mandatory life term for murder breaches their rights under the Constitution and under the European Convention on Human Rights.
Murder is the “ultimate crime against society as a whole” and the State is entitled to impose a punishment at “the highest level which the law permits”, the Chief Justice, Mr Justice John Murray, said.
As a person convicted of murder had to be proven to have intended to kill or cause serious injury, murder could be “properly differentiated from all other crimes”, including manslaughter.
The sole function of a court, once a person was convicted of murder, was to impose the mandatory life sentence, and the law did not permit a recommendation by a judge as to the length of imprisonment, he also found.
He was delivering the unanimous judgment of the five-judge court dismissing the claims by Whelan and Lynch.
Whelan was jailed for life after he pleaded guilty in 2002 to the murder of student Nicola Sweeney (20) at Underwood House, Rochestown, Cork, in April 2002. He received a 15-year sentence for the attempted murder of her friend, Sinéad O’Leary, which runs consecutively to the life term.
Lynch is serving a life term after pleading guilty in 1997 to murdering Donegal pensioner William Campbell (77) at Mr Campbell’s home in September 1995. Mr Campbell died after being repeatedly struck over the head with a saucepan during a robbery.
They had appealed against a High Court decision dismissing their arguments that Section 2 of the Criminal Justice Act 1990, which provides for the mandatory life term, is repugnant to the Constitution or incompatible with provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Mr Justice Murray yesterday said murder deprived the victim “finally and irrevocably of the most fundamental of rights, the right to be, and may also have exceptional irretrievable consequences of a devastating nature for the family of a victim”.
The crime had always been considered at the highest level of gravity since the foundation of the State. There was nothing offensive in the Oireachtas promoting respect for life by concluding that any murder, even at the lowest end of the scale, was “so abhorrent and offensive” to society it merited a mandatory life sentence.
The sentence was consistent with the provisions of the Constitution, including the duty of the State to defend and vindicate the rights of citizens, including the right to life, he said.
The Constitution did not require a trial judge should be able to consider imposing a different sentence which they might consider more appropriate or proportionate to the particular circumstances of a case, he found.
Mr Justice Murray also ruled the mandatory term did not remove judicial discretion from sentencing or give the Minister for Justice a judicial power relating to sentencing in breach of the constitutional separation of powers.
A life sentence was exclusively punitive and no convicted person may be sentenced by a court or detained by executive order for a preventative or non-punitive purpose.
The power of the Minister to release a prisoner was a distinct executive function, the judge said.
