Grangegorman killings
Encyclopedia
The Grangegorman killings were the killings on 6 March 1997 of Sylvia Shields and Mary Callinan, patients of St Brendan’s Psychiatric Hospital
in Grangegorman
, Dublin, Ireland
. After giving a false confession
, Dean Lyons was charged with the murders and placed on remand
. In his statement to the Irish police force, the Garda Síochána
(commonly called the Gardaí), Lyons gave details that would only be known to the murderer or to the investigators. After Lyons was charged, Mark Nash confessed to the killings, but later retracted his confession; he was due to be tried in 2011, however, he has sought a judicial review to prevent his trial from going ahead.
Lyons was described by one of the gardaí (policemen) involved in the case as a "Walter Mitty
" character, and Dr Charles Smith, psychiatrist and director of the Central Mental Hospital, Dundrum
, felt that he might be prone to exaggeration and attention seeking
. A commission of investigation was set up to investigate the conduct of the gardaí in the case. Dean Lyons died from a heroin overdose in 2000. He spent nine months in jail for a crime that he did not commit.
house owned by the Eastern Health Board, and was used to provide sheltered accommodation for outpatients of St Brendan’s Psychiatric Hospital.
The two women had been repeatedly stabbed, their throats and faces had been cut. One of the women's genitals had been extensively mutilated, and both women were partially undressed. The level of mutilation had never before been encountered in a murder investigation in Ireland. Neither of the women had been rape
d, and no semen
was found at the scene. The killings were described as: "the most brutal murders in Irish criminal history" by the Irish Examiner
newspaper
(NBCI). The house and the surrounding area were subject to a forensic examination by the Garda Technical Bureau
. Gardaí performed house to house inquiries, took more than 1000 statements, and interviewed over 250 suspects. A postmortem examination of the bodies was made by the State Pathologist
, Professor John Harbison; his first report was delivered on 13 March 1997. No material was found either by the forensic examination of the scene or by the postmortem examination that would have linked a suspect to the crime.
From the beginning of the investigation until 26 July 1997, the Gardaí had no main suspect. In April 1997, they engaged a team of criminal psychologists
to develop a profile
of the killer. Among other items in their initial report, they said that "THE OFFENDER WAS EXTREMELY DANGEROUS AND WAS LIKELY TO REOFFEND" (emphasis in original), and that the killer was likely to have had prior experience of burglary. A local resident had noticed someone acting suspiciously a week or two before the killings; his statement to the Gardaí was used to make a facial composite
:
As a result of the psychological profile, the Gardaí broadcast an appeal for information on the RTÉ
television programme Crimeline with a request for people who's houses had been broken into in the Grangegorman area to contact them. After interviewing a number of people involved in burglary, they discovered that Dean Lyons had been talking about the killings. Lyons matched the facial composite released by the gardaí and he was questioned on 26 July 1997.
in West Dublin, the fourth in a family of six children. He went to Scoil Aonghusa National School in Tallaght, where he had some difficulty with his schoolwork. According to his teachers, in today's terms, he would have been classified as having a moderate general learning disability
. He was assessed by a psychologist when he was in sixth class, around the age of twelve, who found him to have an intelligence quotient
of 70. As a result of the psychologist's report, Lyons was moved to St. Joseph's Special School in Tallaght. During his period in St. Joseph's, he developed a reputation for attention seeking and storytelling. After school, he never held down a steady job and drifted into heroin addiction and homelessness. At the time of his arrest for the Grangegorman murders, he had one conviction for burglary, and had been involved in a number of syringe robberies.
hostel in Grangegorman. Detective Garda William Mullis and Garda Joseph O’Connor approached him as he was leaving the hostel. They reported that Lyons said: “I think I know what this is about”. The gardaí brought Lyons to the Bridewell garda station, and interviewed him in the doctor's room. According to the gardaí, at one point during the interview, Lyons burst out crying and said that he had killed the two women. Lyons claimed that he was suffering withdrawal
symptoms at the time and that he made the admission so that he could get more drugs. He said that Garda O’Connor had promised that the sooner he confessed, the sooner he would be released from custody and that he "wasn't thinking straight". The gardaí say that he was told that he was not under arrest and that he could leave at any time. As a result of his confession, Dean Lyons was arrested on suspicion of murdering the two women at 13:46 on 26 July 1997.
Lyons' admissions during the first interview were not very detailed, and many of the details provided did not match the evidence. Lyons gave incorrect information about the precise location of the killings and about the number of weapons used. During the interview, he was confused about the number of people that had been killed, and he thought that the women were awake, and moving about the house at the time, which conflicted with the forensic evidence.
Midway through the interview, Lyons was allowed a break, during which he was seen by a doctor, and was given medication. He also met his father during this break. He told his father that he had committed the murder, to which his father replied: “Dean, you are a terrible liar”. The gardaí had an informal meeting during the break, during which some gardaí expressed unease about Dean Lyons; Detective Garda Cox described him as a "Walter Mitty" character during this meeting. There are some significant changes in Lyons' story after the break. For example: prior to the break, he claimed that he had used only one knife and after the break, he said that he had used four separate weapons, including electric carving knives. The latter description matches closely to Professor Harbison's report. A number of detailed descriptions were given which matched closely with the physical evidence and with the psychological profile.
while Lyons was on remand. Dr Gisli Gudjonsson
, a psychologist engaged by Lyons' solicitors, found that he was very suggestible
and susceptible to leading questions. The commission of investigation pointed out the following exchange as an example of Lyons changing his position in response to a question:
in North Dublin. During his interview with the gardaí, he said that about three months prior to his arrest, as he was walking to Stoneybatter
, he broke into a house through the back, and had stabbed two women in their sleep. In his statement, there were at least two aspects of the crime scene that were not known to the public at the time. Nash later retracted his confession. Nash was due to be tried for the murders in 2011, but he has since sought a judicial review to prevent his trial from going ahead.
Mark Nash's confession caused some consternation amongst the gardaí, as Dean Lyons had been charged at that point and was on remand awaiting trial. Two camps emerged within the gardaí, one which believed that Nash's confession threw doubt on Lyons' guilt, the other which believed that Lyons was the murderer. On 27 August 1997, the Garda Commissioner appointed Assistant Commissioner James McHugh to carry out a review of the available evidence. He released a preliminary report on 10 September 1997, and an interim report on 9 January 1998; while these reports did not come to a conclusion about Lyons' guilt, they did raise a number of doubts about his testimony.
' office appointed a psychologist, Dr Adrian Grounds, to assess Dean Lyons. Dr Grounds concluded that Dean Lyons was highly suggestible and that his admissions were unreliable:
As a result of Dr Grounds' report, the charge of murder against Dean Lyons was dropped on 29 April 1998; he had been imprisoned on remand for nine months. Lyons died in 2000 of a heroin overdose. In 2005, the Garda Síochána published an apology to the Lyons family for Dean Lyons' arrest and detention in national newspapers.
, S.C. The commission's terms of reference
are stated below:
newspaper before it was publicly available. McNulty was one of the detectives who interviewed Dean Lyons after he made his initial confession; he received a suspended jail sentence
of twelve months and a €5000 fine for leaking the report.
St. Brendan's Hospital (Grangegorman)
St. Brendan's Hospital is a psychiatric facility located in the north Dublin suburb of Grangegorman. It forms part of the HSE mental health services of Dublin North East. Its catchment area is North West Dublin...
in Grangegorman
Grangegorman
Grangegorman Development Agency is an agency of the Government of Ireland charged with redevelopment of the Grangegorman Campus, formerly within the curtilage of St. Brendan's Hospital...
, Dublin, Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
. After giving a false confession
False confession
A false confession is an admission of guilt in a crime in which the confessor is not responsible for the crime. False confessions can be induced through coercion or by the mental disorder or incompetency of the accused...
, Dean Lyons was charged with the murders and placed on remand
Detention of suspects
The detention of suspects is the process of keeping a person who has been arrested in a police-cell, remand prison or other detention centre before trial or sentencing. One criticism of pretrial detention is that eventual acquittal can be a somewhat hollow victory, in that there is no way to...
. In his statement to the Irish police force, the Garda Síochána
Garda Síochána
, more commonly referred to as the Gardaí , is the police force of Ireland. The service is headed by the Commissioner who is appointed by the Irish Government. Its headquarters are located in the Phoenix Park in Dublin.- Terminology :...
(commonly called the Gardaí), Lyons gave details that would only be known to the murderer or to the investigators. After Lyons was charged, Mark Nash confessed to the killings, but later retracted his confession; he was due to be tried in 2011, however, he has sought a judicial review to prevent his trial from going ahead.
Lyons was described by one of the gardaí (policemen) involved in the case as a "Walter Mitty
Walter Mitty
Walter Mitty is a fictional character in James Thurber's short story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", first published in the New Yorker on March 18, 1939, and in book form in My World and Welcome to It in 1942...
" character, and Dr Charles Smith, psychiatrist and director of the Central Mental Hospital, Dundrum
Dundrum
Dundrum is the name of several places:in Ireland:*Dundrum, Dublin, a suburb of Dublin city.**Dundrum Town Centre, a shopping centre*Dundrum, County Tipperary** the Dundrum meteorite of 1865, which fell in Munster, Ireland...
, felt that he might be prone to exaggeration and attention seeking
Attention seeking
Enjoying the attention of others is quite socially acceptable. In some instances, however, the need for attention can lead to difficulties. The term attention seeking is generally reserved for such situations where excessive and "inappropriate attention seeking" is seen.-Styles:The following...
. A commission of investigation was set up to investigate the conduct of the gardaí in the case. Dean Lyons died from a heroin overdose in 2000. He spent nine months in jail for a crime that he did not commit.
Killings
On the morning of 7 March 1997, Sylvia Shields and Mary Callinan were found dead in No.1 Orchard View, Grangegorman, Dublin 7. They were found by Ann Mernagh, another resident of the house, who raised the alarm at No.5 Orchard View. The house was a two story end of terraceTerraced house
In architecture and city planning, a terrace house, terrace, row house, linked house or townhouse is a style of medium-density housing that originated in Great Britain in the late 17th century, where a row of identical or mirror-image houses share side walls...
house owned by the Eastern Health Board, and was used to provide sheltered accommodation for outpatients of St Brendan’s Psychiatric Hospital.
The two women had been repeatedly stabbed, their throats and faces had been cut. One of the women's genitals had been extensively mutilated, and both women were partially undressed. The level of mutilation had never before been encountered in a murder investigation in Ireland. Neither of the women had been rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
d, and no semen
Semen
Semen is an organic fluid, also known as seminal fluid, that may contain spermatozoa. It is secreted by the gonads and other sexual organs of male or hermaphroditic animals and can fertilize female ova...
was found at the scene. The killings were described as: "the most brutal murders in Irish criminal history" by the Irish Examiner
Irish Examiner
The Irish Examiner, formerly The Cork Examiner and then The Examiner, is an Irish national daily newspaper which primarily circulates in the Munster region surrounding its base in Cork, though it is available throughout the country...
newspaper
Initial investigation
After the alarm had been raised, a major investigation commenced involving detectives from the Dublin Metropolitan North Central Division and the National Bureau of Criminal InvestigationNational Bureau of Criminal Investigation
The National Bureau of Criminal Investigation , is a branch of Ireland's national police force, An Garda Síochána. It investigates serious crime throughout the country....
(NBCI). The house and the surrounding area were subject to a forensic examination by the Garda Technical Bureau
Garda Technical Bureau
The Garda Technical Bureau is the longest established Specialist unit in An Garda Síochána. The Bureau comprises eight Sections each providing a specialist service to An Garda Síochána:#Fingerprinting#Ballistics#Photography#Mapping...
. Gardaí performed house to house inquiries, took more than 1000 statements, and interviewed over 250 suspects. A postmortem examination of the bodies was made by the State Pathologist
State Pathologist's Office
The State Pathologist's Office is a branch of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform in the Republic of Ireland. The function of the State Pathologist's Office is to provide advice on matters relating to forensic pathology and to perform post-mortem examinations in homicide cases...
, Professor John Harbison; his first report was delivered on 13 March 1997. No material was found either by the forensic examination of the scene or by the postmortem examination that would have linked a suspect to the crime.
From the beginning of the investigation until 26 July 1997, the Gardaí had no main suspect. In April 1997, they engaged a team of criminal psychologists
Criminal psychology
Criminal psychology is the study of the wills, thoughts, intentions and reactions of criminals. It is related to the field of criminal anthropology. The study goes deeply into what makes someone commit crime, but also the reactions after the crime, on the run or in court...
to develop a profile
Offender profiling
Offender profiling, also known as criminal profiling, is a behavioral and investigative tool that is intended to help investigators to profile unknown criminal subjects or offenders. Offender profiling is also known as criminal profiling, criminal personality profiling, criminological profiling,...
of the killer. Among other items in their initial report, they said that "THE OFFENDER WAS EXTREMELY DANGEROUS AND WAS LIKELY TO REOFFEND" (emphasis in original), and that the killer was likely to have had prior experience of burglary. A local resident had noticed someone acting suspiciously a week or two before the killings; his statement to the Gardaí was used to make a facial composite
Facial composite
A facial composite is a graphical representation of an eyewitness's memory of a face, as recorded by a composite artist. Facial composites are used mainly by police in their investigation of crimes.-PhotoFIT generation:...
:
"I would describe this fellow as about 6 foot to 6 foot 2, aged 35 to 38 years, very slim, had a black moustache, long at the side. He had a stubble which was very noticeable, a week or two’s growth. The moustache was much thicker than the stubble. He had dark hair, straight and to the shoulder. His hair was split at the middle in the front and brushed to each side. He had a long thin face. He had dark eyes and dark eyebrows. He was badly dressed as if the clothes did not suit him. He was dirty looking but not scruffy looking. He was wearing jeans that had a flare, blue in colour. He had dirty white runners on. He was wearing an anorak type coat which came down a few inches below the waist. The coat was zipped up and was a bright colour like a bright brown colour without a hood."
As a result of the psychological profile, the Gardaí broadcast an appeal for information on the RTÉ
RTE
RTÉ is the abbreviation for Raidió Teilifís Éireann, the public broadcasting service of the Republic of Ireland.RTE may also refer to:* Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, 25th Prime Minister of Turkey...
television programme Crimeline with a request for people who's houses had been broken into in the Grangegorman area to contact them. After interviewing a number of people involved in burglary, they discovered that Dean Lyons had been talking about the killings. Lyons matched the facial composite released by the gardaí and he was questioned on 26 July 1997.
Dean Lyons
Dean Lyons was born on 20 April 1973; he was 24 when he was arrested. He grew up in TallaghtTallaght
Tallaght is the largest town, and county town, of South Dublin County, Ireland. The village area, dating from at least the 17th century, held one of the earliest settlements known in the southern part of the island, and one of medieval Ireland's more important monastic centres.Up to the 1960s...
in West Dublin, the fourth in a family of six children. He went to Scoil Aonghusa National School in Tallaght, where he had some difficulty with his schoolwork. According to his teachers, in today's terms, he would have been classified as having a moderate general learning disability
Learning disability
Learning disability is a classification including several disorders in which a person has difficulty learning in a typical manner, usually caused by an unknown factor or factors...
. He was assessed by a psychologist when he was in sixth class, around the age of twelve, who found him to have an intelligence quotient
Intelligence quotient
An intelligence quotient, or IQ, is a score derived from one of several different standardized tests designed to assess intelligence. When modern IQ tests are constructed, the mean score within an age group is set to 100 and the standard deviation to 15...
of 70. As a result of the psychologist's report, Lyons was moved to St. Joseph's Special School in Tallaght. During his period in St. Joseph's, he developed a reputation for attention seeking and storytelling. After school, he never held down a steady job and drifted into heroin addiction and homelessness. At the time of his arrest for the Grangegorman murders, he had one conviction for burglary, and had been involved in a number of syringe robberies.
First interview and arrest
At the time of Lyons' first interview with the gardaí, he was staying at the Salvation ArmySalvation Army
The Salvation Army is a Protestant Christian church known for its thrift stores and charity work. It is an international movement that currently works in over a hundred countries....
hostel in Grangegorman. Detective Garda William Mullis and Garda Joseph O’Connor approached him as he was leaving the hostel. They reported that Lyons said: “I think I know what this is about”. The gardaí brought Lyons to the Bridewell garda station, and interviewed him in the doctor's room. According to the gardaí, at one point during the interview, Lyons burst out crying and said that he had killed the two women. Lyons claimed that he was suffering withdrawal
Withdrawal
Withdrawal can refer to any sort of separation, but is most commonly used to describe the group of symptoms that occurs upon the abrupt discontinuation/separation or a decrease in dosage of the intake of medications, recreational drugs, and alcohol...
symptoms at the time and that he made the admission so that he could get more drugs. He said that Garda O’Connor had promised that the sooner he confessed, the sooner he would be released from custody and that he "wasn't thinking straight". The gardaí say that he was told that he was not under arrest and that he could leave at any time. As a result of his confession, Dean Lyons was arrested on suspicion of murdering the two women at 13:46 on 26 July 1997.
Lyons' admissions during the first interview were not very detailed, and many of the details provided did not match the evidence. Lyons gave incorrect information about the precise location of the killings and about the number of weapons used. During the interview, he was confused about the number of people that had been killed, and he thought that the women were awake, and moving about the house at the time, which conflicted with the forensic evidence.
Subsequent interviews
While the first interview was videotaped, at the beginning of the second interview, Lyons said that he wanted video recording to be stopped. It has been alleged that the decision to terminate the recording was prompted by the gardaí before the start of the second interview. A number of items discussed during the second interview were not included on the formal interview record, including anecdotes told by Lyons about his former criminal activity which gardaí believed at the time to be untrue. As the interview continued, Lyons was asked if he wanted to make a formal statement, to which he agreed. This statement contains a number of points about the killings that were not known to the public at the time. Some of the more glaring inaccuracies mentioned in the first interview are not included in the statement, although this statement contains some notable omissions and inaccuracies.Midway through the interview, Lyons was allowed a break, during which he was seen by a doctor, and was given medication. He also met his father during this break. He told his father that he had committed the murder, to which his father replied: “Dean, you are a terrible liar”. The gardaí had an informal meeting during the break, during which some gardaí expressed unease about Dean Lyons; Detective Garda Cox described him as a "Walter Mitty" character during this meeting. There are some significant changes in Lyons' story after the break. For example: prior to the break, he claimed that he had used only one knife and after the break, he said that he had used four separate weapons, including electric carving knives. The latter description matches closely to Professor Harbison's report. A number of detailed descriptions were given which matched closely with the physical evidence and with the psychological profile.
Doubts about Dean Lyons' testimony
As mentioned, some of the gardaí had expressed doubts about Lyons while he was being interviewed. Dr Charles Smith found his confession unconvincing and expressed his concerns to Lyons' solicitorSolicitor
Solicitors are lawyers who traditionally deal with any legal matter including conducting proceedings in courts. In the United Kingdom, a few Australian states and the Republic of Ireland, the legal profession is split between solicitors and barristers , and a lawyer will usually only hold one title...
while Lyons was on remand. Dr Gisli Gudjonsson
Gísli Guðjónsson
Gísli Hannes Guðjónsson, CBE is a Professor of Forensic Psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry of King's College London. He is an internationally renowned authority on suggestibility and false confessions whose expert testimony was the basis for the convictions of the Birmingham Six and...
, a psychologist engaged by Lyons' solicitors, found that he was very suggestible
Suggestibility
Suggestibility is the quality of being inclined to accept and act on the suggestions of others.A person experiencing intense emotions tends to be more receptive to ideas and therefore more suggestible. Generally, suggestibility decreases as age increases...
and susceptible to leading questions. The commission of investigation pointed out the following exchange as an example of Lyons changing his position in response to a question:
Mark Nash's confession
In August 1997, Carl Doyle and his wife Catherine Doyle were stabbed several times in Ballintubber, Co Roscommon by Mark Nash, a 25 year-old resident of DrumcondraDrumcondra
Drumcondra is the name of several places:* Drumcondra, Dublin, Ireland, a residential area on the Northside of Dublin.** Drumcondra railway station** Drumcondra F.C., former football club...
in North Dublin. During his interview with the gardaí, he said that about three months prior to his arrest, as he was walking to Stoneybatter
Stoneybatter
Stoneybatter, historically known as Bohernaglogh , is a suburb of Dublin, Ireland, situated on the Northside of the city between the River Liffey, the North Circular Road, Smithfield Market, and Grangegorman. It is located in the Dublin 7 postal district.James Collins' 1913 book, 'Life in Old...
, he broke into a house through the back, and had stabbed two women in their sleep. In his statement, there were at least two aspects of the crime scene that were not known to the public at the time. Nash later retracted his confession. Nash was due to be tried for the murders in 2011, but he has since sought a judicial review to prevent his trial from going ahead.
Mark Nash's confession caused some consternation amongst the gardaí, as Dean Lyons had been charged at that point and was on remand awaiting trial. Two camps emerged within the gardaí, one which believed that Nash's confession threw doubt on Lyons' guilt, the other which believed that Lyons was the murderer. On 27 August 1997, the Garda Commissioner appointed Assistant Commissioner James McHugh to carry out a review of the available evidence. He released a preliminary report on 10 September 1997, and an interim report on 9 January 1998; while these reports did not come to a conclusion about Lyons' guilt, they did raise a number of doubts about his testimony.
Lyons exonerated
As a result of Assistant Commissioner McHugh's investigation and due to the defense solicitor's refusal to release Dr Gudjonsson's report, the Director of Public ProsecutionsDirector of Public Prosecutions
The Director of Public Prosecutions is the officer charged with the prosecution of criminal offences in several criminal jurisdictions around the world...
' office appointed a psychologist, Dr Adrian Grounds, to assess Dean Lyons. Dr Grounds concluded that Dean Lyons was highly suggestible and that his admissions were unreliable:
"I am not in a position to corroborate Mr Lyons’ account of being corrected, prompted and advised by Garda officers and his description of learning from them about the details of the admissions they were seeking. However Mr Lyons’ account to me in our interview supported and was consistent with the earlier impressions I had gained from reading the case papers. In my earlier report I noted that the materials then available to me raised questions about whether the details of Mr Lyons’ final admissions could have derived from the content of questions put to him during the day, rather than his knowledge and memory, and about whether he was unusually suggestible. Following my interview with Dean Lyons and his parents, these concerns are substantially strengthened and I now think that it is very likely that his detailed admissions were unreliable."
As a result of Dr Grounds' report, the charge of murder against Dean Lyons was dropped on 29 April 1998; he had been imprisoned on remand for nine months. Lyons died in 2000 of a heroin overdose. In 2005, the Garda Síochána published an apology to the Lyons family for Dean Lyons' arrest and detention in national newspapers.
Commission of investigation
In February 2006, a commission of investigation was established to investigate the circumstances surrounding Dean Lyons' confession and arrest, its sole member was George BirminghamGeorge Birmingham
George M. Birmingham is a High Court judge and former Irish Fine Gael politician.George Birmingham was born in Dublin in 1954. He was educated at St. Paul's College, Trinity College, Dublin and King's Inns where he qualified as a barrister. He first became involved in politics in 1979 when he...
, S.C. The commission's terms of reference
Terms of reference
Terms of reference describe the purpose and structure of a project, committee, meeting, negotiation, or any similar collection of people who have agreed to work together to accomplish a shared goal. The terms of reference of a project are often referred to as the project charter.- Terms of...
are stated below:
To undertake a thorough investigation and make a report in accordance with the provisions of section 32 of the Commission of Investigation Act 2004 (No. 23 of 2004) on the following specific matters:
1) the circumstances surrounding the making of a confession by Dean Lyons (deceased) about the deaths of Ms Mary Callinan and Ms Sylvia Sheils in March 1997 in Grangegorman Dublin 7,
2) the adequacy of the Garda assessment of the reliability of Mr Lyons’ confession both before and after he was charged with murder, and
3) the adequacy of information provided by the Garda Síochána on the morning of 27 July 1997 to the Director of Public Prosecutions and in particular whether any additional information should have been provided at that time.
Leaking of report
In 2006, Robert McNulty leaked the draft report of the commission to the Evening HeraldEvening Herald
The Evening Herald is a mid-market tabloid evening newspaper published in Dublin, Ireland by Independent News & Media. It is published Monday-Saturday, and has three editions — City Edition, City Final Edition and National Edition...
newspaper before it was publicly available. McNulty was one of the detectives who interviewed Dean Lyons after he made his initial confession; he received a suspended jail sentence
Suspended sentence
A suspended sentence is a legal term for a judge's delaying of a defendant's serving of a sentence after they have been found guilty, in order to allow the defendant to perform a period of probation...
of twelve months and a €5000 fine for leaking the report.
Commission findings
The commission found that Lyons acquired the detailed information in his statement from the gardaí: "Dean Lyons acquired the detailed information in relation to the crimes which is a feature of later interviews, and in particular the third interview, from the gardaí who were interviewing him." The commission found that: "The written record maintained of the non video-recorded interviews is not comprehensive and matters are excluded that would have assisted in the assessment of the reliability of Dean Lyons. This is not in accordance with section 12 (11) (b)(i) of the Criminal Justice Act (Treatment of Persons in Custody in Garda Síochána Stations) Regulations 1987." The report said that Dean Lyons was not abused or ill treated during his detention and that:His admissions were not produced by oppression or coercive conduct on the part of the Gardaí. Neither were the admissions produced as a result of anything in the nature of a bribe or inducement. There was no deliberate attempt to frame Dean Lyons. However, Dean Lyons was able to provide accurate details of murders it is now accepted that he did not commit, due to the manner in which he was interviewed by gardaí. He wished to associate himself with the murders and readily agreed to leading questions which were asked by interviewing gardaí.