Senan Molony's Beef with the Dead
I might be setting myself up as a target but at least I'm hundreds of miles away and beyond the jurisdiction of the Irish police.
I have been a witness to a drama that is still unfolding: a rather unequal fight between the once-respected Irish journalist Senan Molony and a dead Englishman called Ian Bailey.
I quickly bought Molony’s most recent book about the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier for several reasons. It came out last September, just six months after Ian Bailey died. Would it contain any juicy information that people were reluctant to print with Bailey still alive?
Molony appears in some of the Sophie documentaries and enjoys a high profile in Ireland, but also I heard he had completely lost sight of any objectivity and had produced one of the most anti-Ian Bailey books yet.
I did find the book biased and in places it does wilfully misconstrue certain facts. But the annoying part about all true crime books written by professionals or semi-professionals is that none of them are uniformly dreadful.
Even Michael Sheridan’s very old and detailed account is full of vital information. Nobody is infallible. Every book, on any topic, will contain errors. However sometimes it is the way people respond to errors that tells us the most.
During the promotional activities for his book, Molony managed to enlist none other than Irish Prime Minister (Taoiseach) Micheál Martin to appear at certain events. Martin used those events to add his own opinions on the way the murder case was carried out.
This episode took a dramatic turn this summer when a solicitor who used to work for the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in Ireland at the time of Sophie’s murder began legal action. That solicitor, Robert Sheehan, was appalled at the casual way Molony’s book implied he had not fulfilled his objective responsibilities when he evaluated the (thin and one-sided) evidence collected by the Irish police.
In my view, and after writing about this case for around four years, the DPP report, running to around 44 pages, is the most neutral and reliable document ever produced as part of this case.
The irony is that Robert Sheehan is emphasizing that it was a team effort ultimately signed off and released by the office of the DPP. It was not his pet side-of-desk project. But it is a very strong piece of work and if it turns out he was the sole author then he can stand proud that he discharged his public duty without fear or favour.
This is not Molony’s view. This episode of the wider chapter has been covered in Ireland’s version of Private Eye, called The Phoenix. Their “lazy, sloppy approach” to journalism (in Molony’s words) has completely misrepresented Molony’s view that the DPP report was the product of one man’s demented protection of the eccentric Englishman, Ian Bailey.
Yet here we have it, from Molony’s own book:-
It seems to me extraordinary that a single lawyer in the DPP's office could effectively be a jury of one, deciding that each piece of evidence is not beyond all doubt, over and over again. What is instead reasonable is for the hundreds of individual hurdles to be lined up against Bailey in a case based on circumstantial evidence. Let him try to surmount them all if he could - let him even knock down a few - until a panel of twelve from the Irish public is fully satisfied where justice lies… The DPP, as an office, stood behind its single assessor and kept doing so but the collective failure is sheer scandal.
All of this energy being expended on a deceased individual, safely beyond the reach of any and all known legal systems, Ian Bailey.
The mistake so many people make, and it is a very attractive and logical way to think, is that if you have a very large amount of circumstantial evidence, then that evidence somehow multiplies in value. If you can assemble an enormous list of weak evidence, then somehow that weak evidence turns into a strong foundation. Were you to apply this logic to a building project, or anything in the physical world, you would see the fallacy.
For some reason, in true crime, people think that flimsy circumstantial evidence can be added to and built upon to make a strong case. I would go further and say that most of the ‘evidence’ against Bailey is actually gossip and hearsay, and this is more or less what Robert Sheehan found as well.
Sheehan’s recent legal proceedings against both Molony and Martin have hit the sand, at least for now, although the reason seems to be something more like confusion. The judge believed she had to rely on an email sent from the DPP but in fact the email itself states that judges are to act independently, and that any referral to the DPP to arbitrate should be made later on. If the DPP gets involved too quickly in any matter, then one important recourse for appeal is immediately closed.
Unlike other journalists I won’t pretend to be an expert in Irish law. I’m not even an expert in English law. But from a pragmatic standpoint it seems to me that the Irish system, just like the British one, will close ranks and prevent this sort of action from succeeding.
There is literally no way to get a British Prime Minister to account for actions taken while in that role, and no prospect of it happening in Ireland. Sure, a Prime Minister ‘might’ have to suffer a speeding ticket or a driving ban, there being only one set of rules of course, but hauling him to court for any substantive action taken or failures made in the course of his normal duties would be unprecedented.
I am thinking of attempts to get Tony Blair and Jack Straw to account for the Iraq War, 2003 edition, that hit the skids very quickly. Perhaps it is better that we are so reluctant to prosecute our leaders, because the spectacle of American Presidential impeachment is surely worse, and virtually always political (petty and trivial) in nature anyway.
Senan Molony has no such legal protections, but he does have a long career in the Irish media to cushion him. I watch the next episode with popcorn in hand, but the serious point here is that Robert Sheehan has succeeded in putting this case back on everyone’s radar at a time when we learn the official police re-investigation is dragging on, possibly sidetracked by ancient DNA samples which have already been tested and are most likely contaminated, for reasons explored at length by others through the decades.
