Two Dublin men who caused the death of a Limerick man by beating him at a filling station on Usher's Quay near Heuston Station, Dublin, have been jailed for five and three years respectively.
William McDonnell (39), Mary Aikenhead House, Basin Street, Dublin, who was found guilty on May 24th last by a Dublin Circuit Criminal Court jury of the manslaughter of Thomas Moloney Jnr (26) from Cosgrave Park, Limerick, was jailed for five years.
Francis Kenny (43), also of Basin Street, who pleaded guilty on April 11th last to the same charge, got three years.
Both men were assaulted by some family members and friends of the victim, when being brought through the Chancery Place gate from the court to the holding cells nearby.
McDonnell was knocked to the ground and thumped by several young men before prison officers frantically succeeded in separating them and getting him away, with the attackers and some members of the Moloney family still trying to get to him again, despite the urgings of the deceased's father, Mr Thomas Moloney snr, for them to stop their actions.
Kenny was less severely assaulted when taken out of the court because some of the gang had gone towards the front of the Four Courts believing he was being brought in that direction.
Officers pushed away other potential attackers and got him safely away.
The melee happened just after Mr Moloney snr held an impromptu media conference in which he held up photographs of the victim and another son, Alan, who died in a hit-and-run accident in 1995.
He complained about the leniency of the sentences and said that justice had failed his family.
McDonnell had denied the unlawful killing on May 3rd, 2002, and two further charges of assault causing harm to the deceased, and reckless conduct which created substantial risk of harm to him on April 21st, 2002, at the Statoil service station.
Judge Murphy said all the evidence pointed to the conclusion that it was "excessive force in self-defence" which had caused the victim's death.
She said while the dead man's father had alleged in court that the men had murdered his son, this was not the case. "They were neither charged nor found guilty of murder and such inflammatory material though understandable, has to be disregarded," she said.
Judge Murphy sympathised with the sad loss of the Moloney family whom she said had had more than its fair share of sorrow. In sentencing, however, she had to respect the approach taken by the Irish superior courts in sentencing.
The law required her to look at each case individually and to have regard to the particular circumstances of the offence as well as that of each defendant rather than at the crime alone.
Judge Murphy said that while examples of such rigid sentencing can be found in other parts of the world, such as the "three strike" approach taken in the US and to a lesser extent in Britain, Irish law required an overall balance to be reached between the crime, particular circumstances of the attack, and that of the defendants.
She said in this case while it might be unpalatable for the Moloney family to accept, evidence pointed to the fact that it might have been the deceased man who had instigated the violence in the first instance.
Judge Murphy also noted that medical evidence produced in court during McDonnell's trial last month showed it was not brute force that had caused the brain injuries which led to Mr Moloney's death but "rapid movement of the brain in the skull" as proven by Assistant State Pathologist Dr Marie Cassidy.
She said she did not excuse but accepted the fact that the two men had a lot of drink taken on the night of the incident and this had clouded their judgments. There also had been no premeditation involved in Mr Moloney's tragic death.