A judge has for the first time offered "restorative justice" to the family of a man who was stabbed in the chest with a makeshift knife at Mountjoy prison in an apparent row over drugs.
However, the family of Alan Green (30), who was killed by fellow inmate Stephen Wall (23), turned down the opportunity to meet Wall outside of the court sitting, where it had been proposed they would be given an explanation about how he died.
Mr Justice Paul Carney at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin yesterday sentenced Wall, Rathsallagh Park, Shankill, to six years in prison for killing Mr Green, Bray, Co Wicklow, on January 27th, 2004.
After hearing evidence, Mr Justice Carney had asked if Mr Green's family were looking for answers. When Mr Green's parents replied that they were, the judge said: "There are mechanisms available to the court nowadays to bring that about."
He said he had just returned from a conference in Edinburgh dedicated to this matter.
He gave the family a chance to consider whether they wanted to engage in "restorative justice", outside the court, in the absence of any lawyers or judges, in which "the accused faces the family and explains as best as he can why Mr Green was killed".
He said: "If the Green family don't want it, that's the end of it. If they do it will result in a mitigation, in part, on the sentence."
When the court resumed Brendan Grehan SC, prosecuting, said the Green family did not wish to engage in this process.
Wall had agreed to take part.
Mr Grehan had told the court a home-made "shiv" knife - an ordinary butter knife that had been sharpened and bound with tape and thread for a grip - had been used. Gardaí had taken possession of the knife and of Wall's clothing and connected them to the killing by blood analysis.
Shortly after the incident Wall had a number of superficial cuts and had at that stage disposed of the clothes he was wearing. The prosecution said he told gardaí he had received the cuts in a fight the previous day, but when gardaí investigated, they found there had been no such fight.
Mr Justice Carney said it seemed unsatisfactory that all Mr Green's family had been told about how they lost their loved one was "from analysis of a jumper here and a knife there."
However, "the family, as is their right, took the view that they had not been offered any explanation up to now, and it was too late in the day for an explanation in this case."
He said Wall had a "horrendous list" of previous convictions for burglary, theft and robbery. Both Wall and Mr Green were in prison as a result of their drug addictions and it was difficult to know what to do with Wall who was caught up in this situation. He said: "Doing the best I can, I sentence him to six years in prison."
Leave to appeal was refused.
During the hearing, Patrick Gageby SC, defending, said a friend of Mr Green said the fight could have been over some heroin she had given to Wall when visiting the prison, which was to be passed on to Mr Green. This had not been passed on or shared sufficiently, creating "bad blood" between them.