DPP MAN VERSUS TAOISEACH AND HACK

DPP MAN VERSUS
TAOISEACH AND HACK
IAN BAILEY would not have expected
to play a posthumous role in last year’s
general election but Taoiseach Micheál
Martin’s public endorsement of a book
claiming that Bailey should have been
charged with Sophie Toscan du Plantier’s
murder has provoked legal action by DPP
official Robert Sheehan. He has sought a
date from Dún Laoghaire District Court
for an oral hearing to make application for summons that Martin and journalist
Senan Molony allegedly conspired to
breach his statutory and constitutional
rights. Martin made law and order one of his main
general election issues and last September.
Just weeks before the election was called,
he attended the launch of Molony’s book,
Sophie: The Final Verdict, in which the author
had some most unflattering things to say about
the DPP’s failure to prosecute Bailey. Molony felt it necessary to specifically single out
Sheehan, the solicitor in charge of the Bailey file for some years and who dissected the
Garda case against Bailey. Sheehan came to
the conclusion that the DPP had no evidence
to charge him.
In the book Molony wrote: “It seems to me
extraordinary that a single lawyer in the DPP’s
office could effectively be a jury of one,
deciding that each piece of evidence is not
beyond al doubt, over and over again.” Molony went on to make a comment about

Mo C h a r a trich T r a n s l a t o r

office politics in the DPP, before also saying
that “zealous was the mest charitable” way
to describe the attude of the DPP lawyer’s
treatment of the Garda file on Bailey.
Sheehan wrote to Martin (as well as various
media outlets) complaining that he had been
defamed. Martin replied at the beginning of
the election to say that, in his complimentary
comments on Molony’s book (which certainly contained some uncomplimentary comments
on Sheehan), he
referred to the
“system” and not any
individual in the DPP
But Martin
heaped unqualified
praise on the book,
which included
Molony’s allegation
about the “single
lawyer” who
allegedly determined
the DPP decision not lan Bailey
to prosecute Bailey
and which led to what Martin described as
a source of “shame” and a “stain” on our
society. Martin claimed that he had looked
at the “details” of the matter, in which case
he would surely have read the 44-page legal
document written by Sheehan that eviscerated
the Garda case against Bailey. He would also
know, via many media reports, that Sheehan
was the author of this document.
Martin also said: ” We can ask for a proper
review on whether decisions were reasonable
that blocked the murder trial.” (Goldhawk
does not believe that Martin has made such a call since.)
Martin can argue that he referred only to
the “system” but Sheehan is the only person
in the book, described as being the “single lawyer” or “jury of one” responsible for
blocking the murder trial.
Sheehan has researched legal precedents as well as the 2010 Law Report on Inchoate
Offences and the Criminal justice Act 2006
to show that a private individual can take a
criminal prosecution. It will be interesting
to see how Dún Laoghaire District Court
responds to his initiative.
The ex-DPP lawyer has also sent emails to
various media individuals asking them to say
why they should not be similarly prosecuted. These include various RTÉ programmers
(Joe Duffy, DG Kevin Bakhurst and others);
Newstalk’s Pat Kenny; Molony’s book
publishers, Hatchett Ireland; the Law Society and the Law Society Gazette.