A FORMER detective garda who admitted leaking an uncompleted report to the media has been given a 12-month suspended jail sentence and a €5,000 fine.
Robert McNulty (50), Boden Park, Rathfarnham, leaked the draft contents of the 2006 Dean Lyons inquiry to then Evening Herald reporter Mick McCaffrey.
Judge Desmond Hogan said McNulty’s actions were a “serious breach of his obligations as a garda”. McNulty was at the centre of an internal investigation by gardaí and a public inquiry by the now Mr Justice George Birmingham into the treatment of homeless drug addict Dean Lyons.
Mr Lyons made a false confession to the murder of Mary Callinan and Sylvia Sheils in their home on the grounds of Grangegorman psychiatric institute in north Dublin in March 1997. In July 1997, Mr Lyons was arrested and he “confessed”.
However, in August, English-born Mark Nash admitted the murders. Charges against Mr Lyons were dropped eight months later. He died of an overdose in England in 2000.
Gardaí issued an apology to the Lyons family in 2005 and a commission of investigation was set up. It exonerated gardaí of any deliberate attempt to frame Mr Lyons, but was critical that misgivings about his innocence were not conveyed to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).
McNulty’s defence counsel, Pádraig Dwyer SC, had earlier told the Circuit Criminal Court his client was “obsessed” with vindicating his own reputation. Both the draft and final reports vindicated McNulty.
Judge Hogan said McNulty was under a lot of pressure because of “innuendo and suspicion” and had decided to “jump the gun” by leaking the draft report to the press. His resignation from the Garda meant he had lost “a steady job and a regular income” and, had he stayed on, his prospects of promotion would have been “greatly diminished”.
“Had he waited for a period of time, he would not be in the trouble he is in today,” the judge added. “It is a loss he must bear as a result of his activities.”
The report passages which McNulty had leaked pertained only to himself and did not affect others named in it. McNulty pleaded guilty in April that between July 10th and August 10th, 2006, he disclosed the contents of the draft report, a breach of the Commission of Investigation Act 2004.
McNulty left the Four Courts and walked straight into the Bridewell Garda station. He refused to comment on the sentence.
