Judge’s Fury Over Impact Statement

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Judge’s Fury Over Impact Statement

October 17, 2007

By Paddy Clancy

MEMORIES of one of the country’s most high-profile trials in recent years have been reawakened with an attack by the trial judge on the mother of a young victim, and her angry response to him.

In January, 2006, 20-year-old Wayne O’Donoghue was sentenced to four years imprisonment when he was acquitted of murder but pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of his 11-year-old neighbor Robert Holohan.

Holohan was killed a year earlier in Midleton, Co. Cork, and the trial judge Justice Paul Carney ruled that the injuries that led to the death were “at the horseplay end of the scale.”

But O’Donoghue was branded a pedophile killer when Holohan’s mother Majella went off-script in her victim impact statement and asked why semen was found on her son’s body, information that was not introduced by the prosecution in evidence.

The controversy that followed that statement had almost been forgotten until the judge, in a well-flagged address to the Law Society at University College, Cork, recalled it in greatly critical terms last week.

Although he rowed back in actual delivery on some details in the script that was circulated to the media, Carney’s lecture still prompted fierce nationwide debate.

He claimed a 30-second unscripted addendum to the agreed impact statement by Majella Holohan was “scandalous in nature” and “calculated.”

Holohan said she was “hurt and offended” by the remarks.

In a vigorous defense of her position she added, “It is not fair to criticize me for saying how this crime impacted on me.

“It is unreal to think that I could or should clinically segregate and remove from my mind all of these features. The features that I alluded to, semen and the like during the course of my victim impact statement, were matters that any responsible mother would allude to.

“Was I to go in to court and give a statement which made no reference to these matters, although they were of considerable concern to me? I think I would not have done justice to my much-loved son, Robert, if I had done so. Whether Justice Carney or Wayne O’Donoghue likes it or not, these were features in the case.”

Carney said, “I endeavored to ignore the outburst and proceed with sentence but the defense 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 pedophile killer which he was not and which the Director of Public Prosecutions never suggested he was.”

The judge said the sentencing took place against the background of evidence that Robert’s death was “at the horseplay end of the scale” and that the sentence should allow for the “reconstruction of Wayne O’Donoghue’s young life.”

He added, “That sentencing objective was totally frustrated by Majella Holohan’s calculated outburst and the enthusiastic adoption of it by the tabloid press.”

Carney said that he regretted his comments would cause pain to Mrs. Holohan and that there were raw nerves in relation to certain cases, but he felt the time had come to face the issues.

Justice Minister Brian Lenihan gave his backing to Carney who, he said, was making “an important public statement.”

Carney also hinted that the publication of victim impact statements might be curtailed by the courts in the future.

Holohan, in her response, said, “I understand that as a legally trained person, he can and should distinguish between facts he has to take into account and those which he cannot. I do not believe it’s fair to put a victim in the same position.

“I do not believe it is appropriate to censor victims as to what they can say so that it can be palatable for the judge or the offender. A victim should be entitled to say how the crime has impacted upon them.”

Former Justice Minister Nora Owen, who is now a member of the Commission for Victims of Crime, said she welcomed the debate on the issue of victim impact statements.

She said the Law Reform Commission needs to look at widening the scope of legislation which allows victims of particular crimes the right to address the court. She said the legislation was very circumscribed and limited.

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