The mesmerisingly horrible case of Rose-Marie Moran never ceases to mesmerise, never ceases to be horrible, though it attracts not a word of indignation from the very quarters which profess to have a regard for life and liberty. The skewed agenda of bien-pensant Ireland could not have been better illustrated than by its silence over this case: and the hopeless inadequacy of our legal system in coping with murder has, yet again, been brutally exposed. For we know full well that had Rose-Marie Moran been named Rosemary Nelson, there would, very properly, have been an outcry that the man named as her killer had been allowed to go free.
Rose-Marie was murdered in a contract killing organised by her husband Joe Moran and her niece Anita McKeown. They were lovers, and she was inconvenient. The conclusion of this syllogism was that poor Rose-Marie was stabbed some 37 times in her own home.
Plea accepted
Charged with murder, McKeown pleaded guilty to conspiracy to murder, and at her trial in Armagh Crown Court, the plea was, quite remarkably, accepted. The court therefore never heard that she was the main organiser of the murder, and she received merely an eight-year sentence four years ago, and is now free. Three other people, Rose-Marie's husband, Joe Moran, Philip Quigley from Dundalk and another Dundalk man were arrested by gardai on extradition warrants from the RUC. The first two were successfully extradited. The third man appealed against his extradition, and his appeal was upheld by the Supreme Court. However, Quigley and Moran were tried in the North. Moran received a life sentence for the murder, though his trial judge, that excellent gentleman Mr Justice Nicholson, a true guardian of the rule of law, did not regard him as the primary instigator of the affair, and remarked on the leniency of the sentence passed on McKeown.
Quigley received eight years for manslaughter. He told his trial that he thought he had gone to Rose-Marie's home for a simple robbery, which then went wrong, and he stabbed her only a couple of times. Four years a stab. Light enough.
All parties who were tried agree that it was the other knifeman who accepted the commission and who was the principal killer. This is the man whose appeal against extradition to the North to face trial was successful. Here, in part, is what the RUC Assistant Chief Constable, R.C. White, wrote in response to my first column on this subject in April:
Extradition warrant
"This article infers that the RUC was negligent in the preparation of the warrant in this case. Please be advised that: (a) there was no fault found with the extradition warrant from the RUC; and (b) extradition was not refused on any issue connected with the extradition warrant.
"The judgment of the Irish Supreme Court shows this to be the case. No fresh application for extradition has been made as we have been advised that a renewed application would not succeed." (My italics.)
The Minister for Justice agrees with him. In reply to a question from Denis Naughten TD soon after my Diary appeared, Mr O'Donoghue said there had indeed been no inadequacy in the extradition warrant from the RUC. He added that, subsequent to the Supreme Court decision, the offices of the attorneys general in Dublin and London were of the view that a further application for the extradition of "the person concerned" in connection with this murder charge would not succeed.
It was possible, he said, that a trial could take place in the Republic for a murder committed in Northern Ireland, but any evidence gathered during the applicant's detention would be inadmissible at any trial here.
That is on the one hand. On the other, counsel for this fourth man - and I am not naming him because I passionately want him to be tried and I do not want to prejudice that trial - had argued during the appeal hearing that the two RUC warrants for extradition for the appellant employed grounds which were "a departure from fair and proper procedure", and the Supreme Court agreed with him.
Natural justice
At this point, I offer fervent thanks that I never became a lawyer. Of course, I accept that the Supreme Court's judgment is right in law, but I don't understand how. My stupidity, of course. There is much else I don't understand. For is the continuing liberty of the primary suspect in this perfectly dreadful murder not an affront to natural justice? Is the absence of a trial not in itself a scandal? Is a legal system which can actually rule out extradition in such a case not gravely dysfunctional? Are we all - judges, lawyers, citizens and victims - not now prisoners of a legal culture which has established the primacy of procedure over principle?
Not least of all, is the deafening silence of the so-called human rights lobbyists not indicative of their partisan agenda? We know how they would be howling if the victim had been a republican. She wasn't; and her right to life was forfeit by murder. Society is then obliged to vindicate that right retroactively by a full prosecution of those who took it. We have let her and ourselves down badly.