Parents of murder victims call for end to early release
John Sweeney, the father of murdered Cork student Nichola Sweeney told Justice Minister Michael McDowell he was not going far enough by saying he wanted murderers to serve at least 12 years before being considered for parole.
Mr Sweeney said life should mean life. “When you are dealing with murder, the enormity of the crime is such that there is no other appropriate sentence only a mandatory life sentence,” he said. “In the scale of crime from one to 10, murder is up there at 1,000.” Nichola, 20, died of multiple stab wounds in an attack by neighbour Peter Whelan at her home in Rochestown, Co Cork, in April 2002, in which her best friend, Sinéad O’Leary, was badly injured.
Whelan, 20, was given a life sentence for murder and a 15-year consecutive term for the attack on Ms O’Leary, which means he could serve as little as 10 years behind bars.
At a symposium on crime hosted by student barristers at Kings Inn at the weekend, Mr McDowell said he had indicated to the Parole Board that they should not consider a person convicted of murder for release until they had served at least 12 to 15 years and that 15 to 20 years should pass where the murder was committed as part of robbery, gangland activity or drug crimes.
But Mr Sweeney, a panellist at the event, said this policy was insufficient.
The mother of murdered Dublin teenager Brian Mulvaney spoke from the floor to appeal to Mr McDowell to change the operation of the bail laws so that a garda objection was immediate grounds for refusing bail.
Brian, 19, was beaten to death in Templeogue in March 2000. Brian Willoughby, who was out on bail for a vicious assault at the time he attacked Brian Mulvaney, is serving life for his murder and a second man is serving 15 years for manslaughter.
Annie Mulvaney said her son would be alive if garda objections to Willoughby’s bail application had been heeded.
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