Is it intrinsic to our legal system that those involved in it seem utterly incapable of having a shared sense of time? A court released Judge Brian Curtin in 2003 because the warrant to search his house had expired before child pornography was found on his computer.
He is now a free man, still drawing his salary for doing nothing. Good. So a lesson is learned? Well, what do you think? Three men - Wayne Harte, Dwayne Foster and Jeffrey Finnegan - were arrested at 10.55pm on Sunday, March 5th, on suspicion of involvement in the brutal and random murder of Donna Cleary the morning before.
The next day, at 10.55pm, Monday March 6th, Garda Chief Supt Peter Maguire authorised the continued detention of the suspects.
That night, Dwayne Foster died in custody, probably of some drugs-related condition.
So then there were two.
The next day, at 8pm, Tuesday March 7th, those two were scheduled to appear in court to permit gardaí to continue interrogating them.
Chief Supt Maguire, an outstanding policeman - a former head of Special Branch, a trained barrister and one of the most gallant defenders of freedom against Provisional IRA fascism this State has known - had made sure to allow enough court-time before the lawful custody had expired at 10.55pm. Or so he'd thought.
But what did he run into? Lawyers, actually, who - apparently - live in different time-zones, and so the hearing did not get under way until 8.30.
The problems were compounded when Finnegan's solicitor, Yvonne Bambury, insisted on a full hearing for her client and the necessity of going through the legal proofs relating to the extension of time. Wayne Harte's case was heard first.
At its conclusion, Chief Supt Maguire warned the judge that they were approaching their prisoners' release-time.
Judge McDonnell effectively pooh-poohed him, and said he took a certain view of the matter once a person was before the court.
He then heard Finnegan's remand application, and at 11.20pm ordered his continued detention.
The next day, Mr Justice Iarfhlaith O'Neill ruled that that detention was illegal because it had been imposed 25 minutes after the initial lawful detention had expired.
This was precisely what Chief Supt Maguire had, in effect, predicted. Finnegan was thus released.
And then there was one.
Wayne Harte was released at 11.55pm, March 8th.
And then there was none.
The Curtin court ruled that a search warrant became invalid the very moment stated for its conclusion and, as a result, the jury was ordered to acquit Judge Curtin of the charges.
Yet the Finnegan court apparently could ignore the warnings of an impeccable witness - a heroic counter-terrorist of our State - that this might happen.
Equally, the Finnegan appeal ruled that the gentleman in question had been in Garda custody from the time the Bridewell hearing began the day before, when he had clearly not: as Judge McDonnell apparently believed, he had been in the custody of the court, not the gardaí, for the final three hours of his detention.
But most of all: is the lifespan of a warrant not conclusively sorted out in law school?
Or is our legal culture so diseased and precious that it regards itself as being above the ordinary temporal rules that the rest of us have to live by? So GAA has throw-in times, rugby kick-off times, but courts invoke Einstein's Law on Relativity? And is there intense lawyerly satisfaction at outcomes such as that described above? Inscrutable lawyer lore, triumphing once again.
Moreover, there was a bewitching symmetry between this ludicrous farce and events on the Border, as army and police of both jurisdictions finally closed in on the very man who has been the legal and moral inspiration for criminals for over 30 years: Thomas Slab Murphy.
But why now? Why not 20 years ago? For now, it is too late.
In 1986, British soldiers in South Armagh saw a red car departing from the firing-place of a mortar-bomb attack on a military base.
The car entered Murphy's farm, this side of the Border. A British troop-carrying army helicopter landed nearby, but in Northern Ireland territory. Immediately, the soldiers were illuminated by arc-lights. Nonetheless, they started to search through outbuildings on the Northern side.
A Lance Cpl Robinson saw a figure lurking beside a shed, and ran forward and into the Irish Republic, where two men grabbed him and wrestled him to the ground.
However, help was to hand, as gardaí arrived. What did they do? Search the Murphy property for possible evidence of terrorist activity?
Bring in dogs to search for any freshly arrived Libyan Semtex? Arrest the men who had assaulted and apprehended Lance Cpl Robinson? No.
They arrested the soldier for being in unlawful possession of a weapon, took him to Dundalk Garda station and held him for six-and-a-half hours.
That was the Slab Moment. That was the tipping point, when the Provisionals knew that this State truly lacked the will to confront and see off the IRA. Already powerful, the IRA in south Armagh grew more arrogant still.
Eamon Collins gave evidence against Slab Murphy in the Sunday Times libel trial - and the IRA then brutally and ritually murdered him.
The consequences for Sinn Féin? Why, its delegates didn't even get one biscuit less the next time they visited the Taoiseach's office or Downing Street.
Slab is not married but he has hundreds of children, truly chips off the old block. The Slabette generation now ruling our housing estates knows how to kill, how to terrorise, how to resist interrogation, and most of all, how to manipulate both the law and its conceited handmaidens, lawyers.
Our bed is made. Let us now lie in it.