Rapist gets 16 more years for threats to kill prosecutors
Rapist gets 16 more years for threats to kill prosecutors
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/3...cabe58e1cb49ca
A convicted rapist has been sentenced to 16 further years in prison for a campaign of harassment and death threats directed at his victim and the lawyers involved in his original trial.
Michael Murray, 50, formerly of Seafield Road, Killiney, Co Dublin, was excluded from his sentence hearing at Dublin circuit criminal court yesterday after flinging a Bible at the judge.
He was found guilty this month of making death threats against Dominic McGinn SC in November 2014 and Tony McGillicuddy BL in January 2015. McGinn and McGillicuddy were the barristers who prosecuted the rape case against him in the summer of 2013.
He was also convicted of harassing his victim by advertising her online as a prostitute, and making similar posts about McGinn and his former defence solicitor in January and February 2015. He had denied all offences.
Murray was jailed in 2013 for 15 years for falsely imprisoning, raping and sexually assaulting a woman at a Dublin apartment in February 2010, and abducting her child. His sentence was later increased to 19 years by the Court of Appeal. He has 34 previous convictions dating back to 1987.
McGinn described waking in the middle of the night on November 16, 2014, to receive a “devastating” phone call, telling the trial: “I answered it without really thinking about it. A male voice said ‘bang bang’.” That same night, a phone call was received at Garda Headquarters saying “Dom McGinn was going to be shot dead”.
Murray admitted making the call when he was interviewed by detectives. “I put out the hit on him. I wanted to do it myself,” he said. “If you call me a rapist, I’ll kill you.”
The following February McGillicuddy was working late at his office when a blocked number rang. “You prosecuted a man that we know, you and Dominic McGinn, and I am telling you we are going to kill you,” the voice said.
McGinn and a female defence solicitor described googling their names and phone numbers to discover ads describing them as prostitutes. The rape victim’s husband found an ad referring to her in the same way. Browser data recovered from a mobile phone seized from Murray found six different ads had been placed using the phone
Murray was excluded from court for the closing stages of the trial after claiming he had been offered a list with the names and addresses of the jurors. They found him guilty of all charges on July 5.
There was no mitigation offered at Murray’s sentence hearing yesterday, but Murray sought to address the court and was allowed enter the witness box. He claimed he had made the threats in order to get all of those involved back to court and called his original trial “an insult to justice and the criminal system” before the judge stopped him and ordered him back to the dock.
He then grabbed the copy of the New Testament he had sworn on and threw it at her. He missed.
He was sentenced to 16 years in prison, to run from the end of his present 19-year sentence, for what the judge called “a fundamental attack on our system of justice”. “The accused appears to be incapable of rehabilitation at this point,” she said .
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