Paper must pay €75k over contempt before Nash trial

The Sunday World has been given one month to pay €75,000 for contempt of court after it called serial killer Mark Nash a “psycho” and “Pulp Fiction-style killer” before he had gone on trial for a second double-murder charge.

Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy gave his judgment at the Central Criminal Court yesterday after hearing from Brendan Grehan, prosecuting, that the newspaper had printed articles about a notorious killer in the run-up to his trial.

Mark Nash, aged 42, had been a suspect for a murder in Britain and had been convicted of a double murder in Roscommon when he went on trial for another double-murder in Grangegorman in Dublin. The 1997 murders of Mary Callanan, 61, and Sylvia Shiels, 60, attracted a lot of media attention and Mr Nash was charged in 2009.

In April 2015, a Central Criminal Court jury found Nash guilty of the Grangegorman murders by unanimous verdict.

After Mr Nash had been charged but before he went on trial, the newspaper stated he had been convicted of murder and was a suspect in Britain. The newspaper labelled him a “psycho” and a “Pulp-Fiction style killer”.

Shane English, counsel for the newspaper, said that any adverse publicity from the articles was mitigated by the fact that Mr Nash was already a well-known and notorious killer.

Mr Nash’s role in the Grangegorman murders was also widely publicised because of an inquiry into the Dean Lyons affair. Mr Lyons was wrongly charged with the double murder, leading to an inquiry into the garda investigation and revelations that Mr Nash had confessed and was the most likely culprit.