Garda records of some interviews with Dean Lyons, the man wrongly charged with the murders of two women in 1997, were "incomplete, potentially misleading and could have led to a miscarriage of justice", an investigation has found.
Sylvia Shields (59) and Mary Callinan (61) were stabbed to death in March 1997 in sheltered accommodation run by St Brendan's psychiatric hospital in Grangegorman, Dublin. They appeared to have suffered a frenzied knife attack.
Michael McDowell
Dubliner Dean Dean Lyons, a homeless drug addict, was arrested and apparently made an elaborate and detailed confession to the killings. He was charged with the murders.
Another man, Mark Nash, confessed to the murders, outlining details that reportedly could only have been known to someone at the scene. He was being questioned at the time about the killing of a Roscommon couple in August 1997.
Nash is serving life imprisonment for those murders. He later withdrew his confession to the Grangegorman murders, and has never been charged.
Minister for Justice Michael McDowell published the report of the Commission of Investigation into the Dean Lyons case, which was established by the Government last February. Its sole member was senior counsel George Birmingham.
Summarising the report's findings, Mr McDowell said it concluded that there was "no deliberate attempt made to undermine the rights of Dean Lyons".
He said that for the first time, the report offers a "thorough and independent analysis" of the facts surrounding the false confession made by Lyons, based on the evidence of all relevant witnesses.
"It concludes that there was no deliberate attempt made to undermine the rights of Dean Lyons. Instead, inappropriate leading questions were inadvertently asked of him by interviewing gardai - a failure which in turn equipped him with the information to maintain a credible (albeit false) confession.
"With the benefit of independent experts, the report concludes that Dean Lyons's confessions were attributable to prior existing vulnerabilities within his personality which were compounded by his heroin addiction."
The report also states that some of the same gardai who interviewed him "openly expressed scepticism as to his credibility" at case conferences, but that these doubts were never conveyed to the Director of Public Prosecutions, as they should have been before the gardai pressed charges.
"In the Commission's view, the Garda written records of some of the interviews with Dean Lyons were incomplete, potentially misleading and could have led to a miscarriage of justice," Mr McDowell said.
A later decision by the investigating team to proceed with the single charge of murder and also to lay charges in respect of the second murder is described by the commission as "difficult to understand and even harder to justify".
Mr McDowell said he hoped the report would be "some comfort to those whose lives have been so deeply afflicted by this tragedy - in particular the family of Dean Lyons and the families of the murder victims".
The Minister said he would send a copy of the report to the Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy for his consideration. A copy will also be sent to an expert group established by the Minister in light of "concerns" arising from the Dean Lyons case.
"The group will be reporting to me, I expect before the end of the year, on the adequacy of Garda training, protocols, regulations and procedures, in assessing the fitness of persons to be interviewed and on the recording of any bona fide reservations of an individual member of a Garda investigation team as to the truthfulness or accuracy of self-incriminating statements," Mr McDowell said.
That report will also be published, he said.