Why didn’t this State give the last civic right to a murdered citizen?
Newman brutally killed young Irishwoman Georgina Eager.
In the absence of a frank and rational answer as to why the trial took place before an English jury at the Inner London Crown Court, public speculation will be fuelled by deep suspicion that justice was not entirely served.
It was well-served by Judge Jonathan van der Werff and the jury which sat with him. They found the conman guilty and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
But justice was not well served by whatever circumstances caused the case to be heard outside the Irish jurisdiction.
It is remarkable and intriguing why somebody should be tried in Britain for such a crime committed in this country.
In fact, it’s unique.
It was the first time ever that a trial was held in England for a crime committed within the Irish State.
So, it is only right, in the public interest, that the reasons why this should have happened in this particular case be explained.
What was so extraordinary about it?
The fact that the Irish authorities declined to seek extradition, even though the British were anxious to oblige, begs the question as to why our legal enforcers were so shy - or maybe nervous - to allow this trial go ahead in Dublin.
They were so concerned about some circumstances of this case that they were quite happy to rely on an obscure British legislative provision to make sure that Newman - a British citizen, although of Indian origin - would never see the inside of an Irish courtroom.
Yet, it was a straightforward case. The gardaí were investigating Newman in relation to another matter and, anyway, he confessed to the awful murder of Georgina Eager. So, who are ‘they?’ The Department of Justice has washed its hands and those of Minister Michael McDowell of any responsibility in the decision as to where the trial should take place.
Sources in that department - although not an official spokesperson, it should be noted - were able to quote to a Dublin newspaper the relevant section of the Extradition Act, 1965, which was relevant two years ago, that extradition was a matter for the Garda Commissioner in consultation with the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Supt Tom Mulligan, of Crumlin, promptly disabused that notion when he said the Garda had no role in deciding where the trial took place. He “imagined” this decision was made by law officers of both prosecutions.
Well, we know from a statement from George Eager, the murdered woman’s father, that the British authorities had requested the Irish authorities to seek Newman’s extradition so the trial could be held in Dublin.
But, for some strange reason, they didn’t. Subsequently, the Crown Prosecution Service, the British equivalent of the DPP, denied they had made that request.
However, in all this intrigue I find Mr Eager’s statement to be the more credible.
Neither was a legal adviser, or observer, sent to London. The same anonymous source in the Department of Justice was good enough to explain that such a decision was a matter for the Chief State Solicitor - or the DPP.
The Department of Foreign Affairs monitored the progress of the trial, and also provided whatever assistance it could.
Rather a strange role for Foreign Affairs to have in a criminal trial with no ostensible diplomatic or political overtones.
Newman fled to Britain after committing the heinous crime and was arrested there for being drunk and disorderly near Westminster bridge.
That should have set in train a very straightforward extradition process once the gardaí had launched a successful joint murder inquiry with Scotland Yard during which he eventually confessed.
It did not because it must be assumed somebody, somewhere, did not want the trial to take place in Dublin.
Why else invoke an obscure British legal provision to facilitate this outcome?
Newman, who was a quack doctor and had conferred on himself various spurious qualifications, also arranged ‘personal services’ for male callers in the Dublin clinic he ran.
Compare this case with the so-called Colombia Three.In the first, the State has no interest in prosecuting a self-confessed killer who committed murder here and absconded to a jurisdiction which has an extradition treaty with this country.
In the second, three men absconded to Ireland from Colombia, which has no extradition treaty with us, and two garda officers are dispatched there to see if they could gather evidence that the men committed any crime there for which they could be tried here.
Whatever they did, or did not do, in Colombia, they were not wanted for anything in this country, apart from possibly entering on false passports.
Michael McDowell said in a statement that appeared yesterday about the Newman trial that a law student would conclude it was better to try the case where the statements were taken for admissibility reasons.
Maybe, but how many law students would know where to look for an obscure British legal provision which created legal history by allowing an Irish murder case be held in Britain?
Under those circumstances, it’s rather odd that a minister for justice and senior counsel did not inquire, if only out of curiosity, as to why the trial should be held in London.
In his statement, Mr McDowell admitted he did not know why the prosecution opted for a British trial, and he could only speculate as to the reason.
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THERE is no reason to speculate as to why the Bush administration abandoned to their fate the unfortunate people of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Dubya’s mammy, former First Lady Barbara Bush, said it all after a tour of the Houston Astrodome in Texas, which housed thousands of evacuees.
“So many of the people here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them,” and reportedly chuckled as she commented about the unfortunate victims.
They were mostly black and poor and a Third World country would have responded quicker and more competently than the inept way in which the most powerful and richest country on earth managed not to look after its own.
On the day after the devastation of New Orleans, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had a very busy schedule, as one would imagine she might.
She attended a New York performance of the Monty Python musical, Spamalot.
It is hardly comforting for those who lost everything in the hurricane that could have cost at least 10,000 lives that President Bush promised to conduct an inquiry into why the government failed.
One disaster following another.
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