‘What Richard Did’–Released in late 2012, it once again brought the death of Brian Murphy to the forefront of Irish media
This post can be divided into three sections- the first explains why I decided to do a blog post or study on this topic; the second details my knowledge from what I have learnt through my research of the night in question and the subsequent tragic death of Brian Murphy. In the last paragraph I will briefly go through the issues that arose at trial and also take a brief look at what effect the event and the trial of the young men charged over the incident, had on Irish society, in particular the middle class society that I and my peers grew up in.
In terms of my reasoning for undergoing this detailed blog, it can best be explained by a memory of my teens. One night queuing up for the Wez, one of the bouncers ushering the queue along had found out from general chat that we were from Blackrock. He then jokingly referred to us as ‘murderers’ based on his highly intellectual sense of humor. He was of course referring to the incident that occurred on the night of 31st August 2000 outside the Burlington Hotel. The trial took place in 2004, when I was in 3rd year (a fit and healthy 15 year old) and great emphasis and warning was driven into us about the public’s perception of our school at the time, and that we needed to be prepared for the backlash of this due to adverse publicity shown by the media, in particular the newspapers covering the trial. At the time I never knew much about the trial or the actual incident itself, too innocent and high on life to really understand the importance of what had happened and the closeness to home that it was to be associated with for years to come. The recent release of the film ‘What Richard Did’, again brought the issue to the forefront of the media. In terms of how much effort I put into piecing this blog together, I recovered every broadsheet and tabloid article available in relation to the event and also put a good bit of time into the trial scripts that were accessible through the relevant legal databases. Couple this with speaking to a few people who have genuine insight into the events in, and around the time of the event, and this makes up the core body of information accumulated into this post.
It is important at this stage for me to acknowledge, that the contents of this post are done through, as neutral viewpoint as I possibly can, and my own opinion on the matter is ill advised and irrelevant. I tried to keep the factual nexus as concerted and accurate as possible, which proved quite difficult due to the fact that a lot of the material released by the media, differed on some of the most contentious issues especially in regard to the accuracy of events leading and up to the fatal moments of Brian Murphy’s death.
The most important and overriding circumstance that should be taken from this whole issue is that an 18-year-old student died after a confrontation that could so easily have been avoided. For all involved, that night in question is one that will be played over and over in each of there memories and each person involved will wish that events had been played out differently all with a far removed ending than that which occurred.
The altercation occurred on the early hours of the 31st of August 2000. It is thought from a neutral eyewitness that the actual killing of Brian Murphy occurred in no more then 15-30 seconds. In terms of the lead up to the incident, the deceased took a bus with his friend, Matthews Moran, to Annabel’s nightclub. Both the young men worked that summer in the storeroom of Brown Thomas. Ironically enough, the deceased was apprehensive about going to the nightclub because he believed that he was going to be ‘started on’ by some guys from Terenure College, who he had had a run with a few weeks previous.
What seems to have occurred from a neutral standpoint is that Andrew Frame walked out of Annabel’s nightclub and was jeered by a group of five or six similar aged youths. They were laughing and slagging him off, the reason being, it seems, over a young lady called Brooke McVeigh. Frame later explained that they were jeering him because ‘they were annoyed because I was with a girl called Brooke McVeigh, or something like that, while I was on holiday in Spain’. Apparently, this was a friend of the Clongowes lads that the deceased hung around with. Frame walked over to the group and was confronted by a young man in a red shirt-Brian Murphy. After going over to the group Frame later told the Gardaí that he was pushed about three times by ‘a guy in a red shirt’.
It maybe interesting to note at this stage, that after Gardaí assembled and cross-checked hundreds of different statements from the crowd of young people who were in and around the Annabel’s vicinity that night, that there were in fact three different fights that broke out in and around the same time outside the nightclub. One of the incidents that happened before the altercation being discussed, consisted of a young man named Barry Cassidy being head-butted, knocked to the ground and kicked. If it wasn’t for the fact that he was able to cover his head with his hands, then the story being discussed could have involved completely different parties than the ones mentioned in this blog-post.
After the deceased pushed Frame, one of the co-accused Sean Mackey who was present, confronted the deceased because he felt ‘they were dissing him, basically ripping the piss out of him’. At this moment, the deceased hit Mackey in the face. Mackey responded to this by saying ‘ what was the reason for that? , What are you going to do next?’ to which was replied to him by one of the deceased’s friends, ‘he’s going to deck you again’. It was at this moment that Mackey pushed the deceased and he fell to the floor. He got back up straightaway and made a beeline for Mackey-hitting him behind the right ear. Mackey came back and punched him in the head area. Then another youth Dermot Laide joined in the fight. It is understood that Laide’s physique stood out from the others as he was, as Mackey describes, a ‘big dude’. Mackey says about this stage in the affray:
‘I punched him with my closed fist in the head area knocking him backwards. I didn’t see him fall to the ground from that blow because at this stage Dermot Laide had joined in the fight, I remember Dermot Laide throwing punches at him hitting Murphy on the head. He hit Murphy a number of times in the head while Murphy was falling back towards the ground. I would say that I saw Dermot Laide hit Brian Murphy about the head four or five punches. They were hard punches, he is a big dude and he was giving it his all…Brian Murphy fell to the ground after the blows from Dermot Laide. It looked to me that Dermot Laide was holding Brian Murphy with his left hand and punching him with his right hand, before Brian Murphy collapsed to the ground. Dermot Laide punched Brian Murphy a number of times while Brian Murphy was collapsing and falling back onto the ground and while Brian Murphy was on the ground. Dermot Laide then kicked Murphy while he was on the ground. I am not sure exactly where he kicked him.’
This passage in Mackey’s statement clearly implicates Laide nearly entirely in terms of the responsibility to the deceased’s death. During the trial it was decided that Dermot Laide’s name be edited from this statement and that it be replaced with ‘Mr A’. I will examine this in closer detail when looking at the running of the trial as this statement provided the turning point in the trial as a whole.
Another witness in the night in question was Paul Amoroso, who knew the deceased through other friends, was on his way out of the nightclub to get a taxi when he noticed the fracas near the main gate of the hotel. He described the commotion as ‘not a normal fight’ because of the serious demeanor of all those involved. Amoroso stated: ‘there was chaos and all I saw were arms and legs flying everywhere. Someone appeared, I’m not sure from outside the group or inside it, and they started to stop the fight.’ Mr. Amoroso could not identify this person and when asked whether it could have been Laide, he said he couldn’t recall. It seems there was a moment of realization on behalf of this witness as he acknowledges at this moment that ‘I realized that they had all been attacking the one person and I recognized Brian Murphy immediately.’ He also remembers one of the deceased’s friends Michael Hussey running in and punching someone in the face, this turned out to be Frame who had at this time turned his back on the events. Laide then admitted to running in and punching Hussey.
Mr. Amoroso also remembers that he heard someone comment from behind him ‘we got him good’ or something along those lines. Whilst making his way over to the deceased he said that Mr. Murphy tried to get up but he seemed disorientated and just fell forward on his face, unable even to put his arms out. It was at this stage that this witness and three other people ran over and propped him against the wall. At this stage the deceased was unresponsive and unconscious and the ambulance was called for assistance. The disturbing truth behind this witness account is that, initially, he thought that the crowd of people involved were fighting against themselves when really, there was only one person who was being set upon. Another acquaintance of the deceased Morgan Crean, said that he saw him in a fight and falling towards the ground before being set upon and ‘boot’ in the head but he was unable to identify any of these people. He told the court that the deceased was unresponsive by the time he went over to him. Indeed, by the time the ambulance took him to hospital, he was dead. A certain part of his brain had flattened and he had inhaled a substantial amount of his own blood. Mr. Crean also stated that after the deceased had been set upon and kicked by the group there was still a few scuffles going on but various people had run over to interfere and break them up.
Outside the Burlington Hotel, where Annabel’s nightclub was situated, where the tragedy occured
Sean Mackey told the Gardaí that he had kicked the deceased in the middle part of his body- ‘I drew back my leg and kicked him into the midsection of the right-hand side of his upper body, I did not kick him in the head…I felt shit at what I had done.’ Mackey told the Gardaí that he couldn’t remember if the deceased was motionless when he kicked him saying that ‘I just walked in, kicked him and walked out.’ He admitted to being ‘hyper’ after the fight stating ‘I clenched my fist and put my hands in the air and said something like, ‘this is mad’, but afterwards I felt bad.’
Mackey said that he only got involved in the fight to protect his friend Andrew Frame and that ‘he never intended this to happen.’ Desmond Ryan also admitted punching the deceased during his five-second involvement in the fight. Ryan after realizing that the violence had spiraled out of control moved away from the fight. He told the Gardaí that the group around the deceased were ‘kicking the shite out of him’ and ‘it was like a wave of feet kicking him,’. After the assault on the deceased had finished and the group had disbanded, Ryan walked over to the person who had seconds ago punched and tried ‘to make him coherent’ by tapping him on the face. It is contended that this adds a certain naivety to the situation, in that, there was no deep hatred embedded in these young men and that it was a serious example of a situation that had spiraled, rather quickly, out of control.
The intensity and violent nature of the attack on the deceased was acknowledged by evidence given by the former State Pathologist Professor John Harbison, who was clear on the point that Brian Murphy died from blows to the head that they were likely to come from feet rather than fists. He further detailed that parts of the deceased’s teeth were broken and he had received kicks of ‘considerable force’ to the chin, eye socket and upper jaw which caused swelling in his brain causing near immediate death.
Evidence was given in court about one of the attackers who had a spiky, gelled hairdo with silver buckles on his shoes and who had delivered the kicks that turned out to be fatal. A Douglas McGovern, who was sitting on the wall outside the Burlington gave this evidence, clearly identifying from his memory two sets of black shoes doing the kicking. From his evidence, that was backed up, the most significant kick that the deceased received was when he was falling to the ground his direction of fall was suddenly altered by a kick to the chin that caused his head to snap back, and sent him in another direction. This kick, McGovern explained, was given by a youth wearing the black shoes and silver buckle. The issue in relation to the silver buckles played a vital part in terms of Desmond Ryan’s appeal but more importantly the Gardaí believe that the person who owned these shoes was Dermot Laide although his counsel put forward, that he did not own a pair of shoes matching this description.
In terms of the charges brought against the four accused on the 26th February 2004, Dermot Laide, was convicted of both violent disorder and of the count of manslaughter, He received a sentence of four years imprisonment in respect of the count of manslaughter, and a two year sentence for the violent disorder to run concurrent, which means that they run at the same time rather then one after the other. Dermot Laide had his four-year sentence for the 18-year-old’s manslaughter overturned by the Court of Criminal Appeal. The main point of the Court of Criminal Appeals decision was that there was a real risk of an unfair trial to Laide, as a statement made by Sean Mackey implicating Laide as the person who had kicked the deceased in the head, had been edited and disclosed to the jury in a manner that was heavily prejudicial to Laide.
Sean Mackey was convicted by jury vote on the count of violent disorder but the jury failed to come to a decision in respect of the count of manslaughter. The Director of Public Prosecution decided on the 8th March of the same year that he would not be proceeding with a retrial in respect of the count of manslaughter in regard to Mr. Mackey.
In relation to Desmond Ryan, he was acquitted by the jury on the count of manslaughter, but was sentenced to nine months for violent disorder. On appeal it was held that the Gardaí had acted unlawfully when he was arrested out in his home in Dalkey on the early hours of the 6th September 2000. When Detective Sergeant Doyle was cross-examined by Patrick Gageby SC who represented Ryan, he confirmed that his intention when he called to Ryan’s house that morning was to look for the particular shoes with the ornate buckle, which I alluded to before in this blog. It was put forward by counsel that there is no mention of Sergeant Doyle being requested to do anything other than execute the search warrant, meaning that the arrest of Ryan that morning because he ‘believed that he would have been involved in the fracas which led to the death of Brian Murphy’ went beyond his scope and was therefore deemed unconstitutional. Once the search warrant was found to be bad, the Gardaí involved had no lawful authority to be present in the Ryan house, and that their presence in the house was in breach of Ryan’s constitutionally protected right to the inviolability of the dwelling (protected by Article 40.5 of Bunreacht na hÉireann). The act of entering Ryan’s house comes within the principals laid down and followed in DPP v. Kenny, in terms of the ‘intentional and deliberate’ action by members of An Garda Síochana, in the sense that it was not an accidental or unconscious act on their part. There was no ‘extraordinary excusing circumstances’ to allow the evidence to be admitted and for this reason it was deemed to be inadmissible. The Court of Criminal Appeal therefore did not consider that the evidence was enough to sustain a conviction for the violent disorder charge against him and for this reason it was quashed.
In regards to Andrew Frame the manslaughter charge was withdrawn from the jury by the trial Judge and he was subsequently acquitted of violent disorder.
There is obviously a lot more detail that I could have gone into in terms of the incident and especially the trial itself but I thought I would keep it as short as I could without leaving important aspects of the incident out, mainly so not to bore readers and keep things interesting for myself. The main thought that I took from researching this topic is that all persons involved were so young and naïve as to the impact of their actions. Going back a few years to when I was 18 or 19, fights on nights out used to be commonplace, especially in my first year in college. Nearly every night out whether it was in the club or outside Supermacs, there would be serious scuffles such as the one above. As the years have gone by, these needless scuffles seem to be far less frequent where it has gotten to the stage where I have to try to think back to the last drunken fight I saw. This goes to point out the tragic loss of life that occurred that night outside the Burlington Hotel, and the impact it had on many of the families and friends of the people involved especially the deceased Brian Murphy. One word that could be used for the loss of life that evening, but doesn’t contain enough power behind it to justify its use is unlucky. The sense of loss on the deceased’s family is incomprehensible, and I feel a huge amount of sympathy for them in the way that their son’s life was ended so tragically and nobody was held accountable. A parents’ loss of a child in those circumstances would surface serious emotions and indeed anger in any human being, and the fact that no single person was held responsible for the incident and sentenced appropriately adds to these emotions. It is submitted that there were many youngsters involved that night, and that indeed apart from the four main youngsters mentioned above, there were many involved that night that were never brought before the courts or indeed questioned by the Gardaí, who played a part in the Brian Murphy’s death. There still seems to be a lingering shadow over the night in question and this will remain, unless somebody comes to the Gardaí and hands over new information that clears up the tragedy that occurred that night.
ItLooksGood,ItIsGood 