The Nally verdict suggests a deepening gulf between Travellers and the rest of society. Kathy Sheridan, who followed the case from the start, examines possible reasons
When the jury for the Pádraig Nally retrial was being empanelled in the Four Courts a couple of weeks ago, it was evident from the challenges to potential jurors that young women under 40 and young men dressed casually or in tracksuits were not in favour.
Each side may challenge up to seven potential jurors without having to show cause, armed only with details of occupation and what can be gauged from a person's appearance.
In this case the final selection of eight men and four women - including an engineer, an accountant and two electricians - had the look about them of mature home - and/or property-owners: pragmatic people, not the kind likely to be struggling with wet, liberal consciences.
Does it matter? It could be argued that this was certainly a jury of Pádraig Nally's peers. But where did that leave the victim?
For any journalist (including this one) covering the first trial in Pádraig Nally's home county of Mayo, it was evident that sympathy for John Ward and his family was negligible.
It was generally believed - with or without foundation - that no Mayo jury would send Pádraig Nally away if it could help it.
While the supporters of the 62-year-old farmer expected a very different reception in Dublin - "no one understands rural Ireland", said one - they were wrong.
The atmosphere, even around the learned denizens of the Four Courts, was no different.
Few defendants on a manslaughter charge can have received such a congenial welcome around the courts as Pádraig Nally; handshakes in the yard from court employees and visitors, hooting car horns from drivers on the city quays, phone cameras whipped out in the nearby pub for pictures with the Mayo man, dinner bills picked up by total strangers.
On this evidence alone, no Irish jury could be considered truly representative if several members at least did not set out with a bias against Travellers. In a speech last week the Minister for Health, Mary Harney, noted - presumably with facts to hand - that Travellers "still confront enormous discrimination" at many levels of Irish society.
What chance, then, has an offender from the Travelling community against juries made up of settled, relatively prosperous people?
After the verdict the confused response of one woman probably encapsulated the mood of much of the nation: "Nally shouldn't have got off - but I'm glad he did."
She said for all "the politically-correct craw-thumping there is an air of quiet satisfaction" about the outcome.
"Poor, defenceless old people in the countryside are being terrorised - which is nearly the worst thing you can do - and there's no doubt that Travellers are often, if not almost always, involved."
She is "fed up" of Traveller representatives "saying that it's only a small number who are involved in criminality".
"Their numbers in prison are disproportionate; their response will be that it's because they're disproportionately under suspicion - but I think people really are pretty tired of all that."
Again and again the charge is made that Travellers know all about their rights but what about their responsibilities and obligations?
With each new Traveller incident, such as the despoliation of an amenity area like the Dodder, or tonnes of waste left behind on a public sports ground, or small towns being forced to shut down at the eruption of murderous feuds involving slash hooks, pickaxes and shotguns, public attitudes harden.
Publicans tell stories of vast, intimidating Traveller groups taking over a premises.
Traveller women themselves talk quietly - never openly - about extreme violence within their community.
Some of the most violent crimes in Co Mayo in the past decade have been attributed to Travellers, although they have not been proven to be responsible. During the trial in Castlebar last year a priest became visibly upset while telling this writer that elderly people living alone in the area "have no lives . . . because they live in daily terror".
The High Level Officials Group, set up to replace the Traveller Monitoring Committee, has also expressed concern at "reports of violence, intimidation, and organised crime [ such as drug dealing and smuggling] involving members of the Traveller community", and even the emergence of "no-go areas" as a result of intimidation of State officials.
Writing here last week, Felim O'Rourke of Sligo Institute of Technology pointed to the fact that the promotion of the "Traveller Economy", part of official policy for many years, "ignores the fact that the so-called Traveller economy is part of the black economy and may even in some cases involve illegal activities".
Meanwhile, PAYE workers, forced to work harder for every cent, find each one rigorously scrutinised by Revenue.
Thus, to the dismay of decent Travellers and their supporters, public attitudes to their community in general have moved inexorably and dangerously from quiet prejudice to barely-concealed venom.
It was in this atmosphere of real, anecdotal and/or unproven wrongs that the case against Pádraig Nally for the homicide of a Traveller came before two Irish juries.
The question posed this week was whether a body of 12 Irish men and women existed that was capable of withstanding such prejudice within themselves or from external pressures.
Yet the fact is that the jury - expected to fold within a few hours in the face of stern direction from the judge and Nally's previous conviction - ploughed on for nearly 16 hours over three days.
Just a couple of hours before the verdict they came back looking pale and weary to ask a particular question which suggested that some at least were still battling to objectively weigh the true extent of Pádraig Nally's mortal fear as he pumped the second and fatal shot into John Ward's back from only four or five yards away, a man who was already limping from the first shot to the buttock, badly beaten and fleeing for his life down the road.
After the verdict, Paddy Rock, a loyal Nally supporter, dismissed the suggestion that this was ever a Traveller issue. "This is an issue where an intruder came into a man's home . . . where somebody crossed over a boundary to try and do what they did on Pádraig."
The fundamental question is whether any Irish jury, in a grossly anti-Traveller climate, could assess such a case in that way?
Despite the prosecution's contention that Pádraig Nally was "seeking to put Mr Ward out of circulation and to ensure that he would not again plague Mr Nally", the farmer's consistent plea was self-defence: that Ward's four or five known visits to the area had made him agitated and fearful, and that when he finally came upon Ward in his yard and shot him, Nally felt he was then fighting for his life.
A man with John Ward's deeply disturbed psychiatric history, his known propensity for violence, his approximately 80 previous convictions for offences including burglary, trespass and assaulting gardaí, the fact that on the day of his death his body contained a cocktail of drugs - some prescribed, some not - suggest that Pádraig Nally may well have had reason to fear for his life, whether or not Ward was a Traveller, and particularly if he truly believed that "reinforcements" for Ward were imminent.
But would Pádraig Nally, living a fairly solitary life in an isolated area, have been quite so fearful to begin with; would he have fired that first shot if Ward had not been a Traveller and therefore identified with the heinous deeds of others in his community?
That isolation and sense of helplessness were no doubt hugely exacerbated by the fact that when Pádraig Nally sought help - twice - from his nearest Garda station, no one was on duty to hear his worries and offer reassurance.
And if outstanding warrants against John Ward for serious offences had been promptly executed, would the man still be alive today?