Sentencing objective 'totally frustrated' by Majella
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The following are edited extracts from a document, 'The role of the victim in the Irish Criminal Process, part 2', by Justice Paul Carney. The judge subsequently amended his comments.
"Victim impact evidence achieved its greatest notoriety in the case of The People vs Wayne O'Donoghue, a murder trial which opened before me in Cork on November 29, 2005.
Press coverage of the trial was phenomenal. The Irish Examiner at all times had in attendance four writers and two sketch artists. The other major newspapers had colour writers present as well as reporters. All the broadcasting organisations and tabloid newspapers were represented.
On the second morning of the trial, defence counsel made the usual ritual complaints about press coverage.
I indicated to the jury that they must only have regard to the evidence they heard in court and illustrated the importance of this by telling them that an account of the trial which had just gone out on local radio that morning had inverted the sequence of events.
It spooked the press that the trial judge should be aware of what went out on local radio and I believe that this led to caution on the part of the press during the currency of the trial. (See "Afraid of the Dark" by Ralph Riegel, southern correspondent for the Irish Independent.)
This distinguished this particular trial from a long-running trial in the Circuit Court where such caution never broke out.
My impression during the trial was that there was a great deal of public sympathy for both families involved in the tragedy. The tabloid press, I believe, had not made its mind up which way to jump. When Wayne O'Donoghue was acquitted of murder and went back to prison to await sentencing on foot of his plea to manslaughter, I recall the RTE television coverage referring to a woman banging on the side of the prison van and saying "good luck to you son".
It is my impression and I could be very wrong in this, that without for a moment taking from the grief felt for Mark and Majella Holohan, that this reflected the equal measure of sympathy felt for the O'Donoghue family at that point in time.
The sentencing hearing was fixed for Tuesday, January 24, 2006 in Ennis Courthouse. On that date I counted 100 press people in court. My embedded source whose identity I will of course protect, informed me that in a nearby hotel the night before, there were 50 journalists partying until 3 o'clock in the morning -- nothing wrong with that -- and running a sweepstake on everything I might do or say in the course of sentencing. Nobody won the sweepstake or indeed got anything right.
Although I had not requested this, I was furnished in advance with an eleven-page document which Majella Holohan proposed to read by way of victim impact statement. This document was also furnished to the prosecution and the defence.
Following the usual garda evidence, Mrs Holohan read her statement over a period of 25 minutes. When she reached the end of her text she, at breakneck speed, made allegations over a 30-second period which were scandalous in nature and which formed no part of the prosecution case.
I endeavoured to ignore the outburst and proceed with sentence but the defence requested time. By the time I got to my chambers, the word "semen" was already on the airwaves and Wayne O'Donoghue was being branded as a paedophile killer, which he was not, and which the Director of Public Prosecutions never suggested he was.
When O'Donoghue was sentenced it was on the basis that what gave rise to Robert Holohan's death was at the horseplay end of the scale and having regard to the fact that Robert could not be brought back, the sentence was expressed to be designed to provide for the reconstruction of Wayne O'Donoghue's young life.
The finding of horseplay was not plucked out of the air but was based on the pathological evidence of Professor Jack Crane. The sentencing objective was totally frustrated by Majella Holohan's calculated outburst and the enthusiastic adoption of it by the tabloid press.
The tabloids stirred up such hatred for Wayne O'Donoghue that he has no future in this country when his time is served. This was not the intention of the sentencing judge. It is not acceptable that a sentencing objective of the High Court upheld by the Court of Criminal Appeal should be frustrated by a coalition between the victim and the tabloid press.
Nobody would have wished to add to the grief of Majella Holohan but she was given an iconic status by the media, in particular by the tabloids, which would have made it all but impossible for her to be held to account for abuse of process of the court. She was acting under the influence of obsessive grief. The tabloid press do not have this excuse."
