What does 10 years' jail mean in Ireland? Well, to judge from the fate of Kenneth Byrne, it means 21 months - which was how long he had served before he was released last month on the orders of Judge Elizabeth Dunne, who had originally sentenced him.
Ten days ago he was shot dead at his home in Dolphin's Barn in Dublin, which he obviously couldn't have been if he'd done even a reasonable portion of his sentence. Instead, he might have been quietly killing himself in the biggest drugs drop-in house party in Ireland, the Department of Justice's own Mountjoy Jail.
All in all, the fate of poor Kenneth Byrne says an awful lot about how this State functions. He was a confirmed and hopeless drug addict, and paid for his habit with armed private enterprise. He robbed banks for a living; and no doubt he had a few dealers who had to be kept in the manner to which they had become accustomed.
Kenneth Byrne was one of the umbrella gang, so named by the manner in which they hid their faces from security cameras. They didn't confine their activities to Dublin, but spread a bit of excitement to the provinces with their pistols and their parapluies. In other words, they were fully paid-up members of the Dublin underworld, which is now a vast and murderous conspiracy.
By the time of his death, Kenneth Byrne had 30 criminal convictions: one for every year of his life. That's pretty good going. And the question really must be: how, with his appalling record, could he have been given early release? In May 2000, he was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment for armed robberies which had yielded €90,000. But he was already serving two other terms of three years and six years for a spate of armed robberies in the midlands - in all, a total of 19 years. Surely, even allowing for concurrence, that would see him in jail for the greater part of the 10-year sentence, no? No, actually.
But let us go back to November 2000, when the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional for judges to review sentences which they had passed on prisoners and that the practice should therefore be ended. That, you would have thought, was the end of the matter: the Constitution is the Constitution, and if something is declared to be unconstitutional, it should surely be anathema to the courts of the State. Except that the Supreme Court made an exception to its interpretation of the Constitution, and it was this: criminal cases which were heard before its ruling were still amenable to review by the judges who had sat on the original trials.
Thus we have two forms of constitutional law over criminal trials: trials heard before November 2000 exist in an entirely different category from those heard after that date. But since their lordships' ruling was one of interpretation rather than amendment, and involved simple clarification of existing constitutional law, should it not logically have been retroactive? M'luds said otherwise.
So this entitled Judge Elizabeth Dunne to revisit the case of Kenneth Byrne a month ago. And for whatever reason, she looked at this man with 30 convictions, a string of them for armed robbery, in the middle of accumulated sentences of 19 years' imprisonment, and in effect, she said: I like the cut of your jib, my fine fellow; off you go, and keep your nose clean.
This was only possible because he had been sentenced in May 2000. Had he been sentenced in late November the same year, she could not have released him, and presumably he would be alive today. Can it really be constitutional that the Supreme Court may arrogate to itself the right to define two categories of judges, and two sets of criminal citizens, with different constitutional rights according to the time of their encounters? Can there be justice in a system which still allows a judge power over a prisoner and his sentence long after he has left her court?
The tragedy of Kenneth Byrne highlights perfectly the difference between the expectations about the practice of our legal institutions within the broader community, and what lawyers actually do. Most of us unlawyers would have been sure he was to be in jail for another two years at the very least. Indeed, it is not that there's a disjuncture between plain people and the wigged ones so much as a planetary gulf between us. Those of us down here on Planet People might occasionally send off a probe to land on Planet Lawyer and see if there's life there, or at least water; but that's as much as we're ever going to know about that strange wigged world.
But it's not the same the other way round. Planet Lawyer has set up earth-stations all over the place, from which we are comprehensibly ruled, and invariably in the interests and according to the agendas of the legal ETs. The legal profession has become the most powerful force in Irish life. We are governed by lawyers, administered by lawyers, interpreted by lawyers, and lawyered by lawyers.
If there's a tribunal into the reasons why Kenneth Byrne is dead, lawyers will define its boundaries and goals, lawyers will run it, lawyers will decide how long it should take, lawyers will decide on the incredible fees they will pay themselves, and lawyers will decide on its conclusions. And from the rest of us, as usual, silence.
Meanwhile, Kenneth Byrne is dead. RIP.