Barry Clifford "A self confessed suspect"

In the west of Ireland last night I sat down, late, and watched a documentary about a black teenager that was charged with the murder of an elderly white woman by shooting her in the head at a Ramadan Inn to steal her purse. I mention the color because this trial was as racially charged as you could get. They were times as I watched the drama unfold that I wondered was I watching some left over piece of history from 1960’s America. No, this was Jacksonville Florida in 2001 and looked like nothing had been learned since then.

On the day it all began, the Police were so sure of a slam dunk case that they invited the national media on board to proudly boast of their detective work in a case that was so defective that the wider world quickly took notice a little later. The cops, like any institutional organization of any year, had an entire tax- payer funded juggernaut behind them to defend their gross dishonesty and crimes; a shameful exercise for all concerned in this boy’s prosecution not only in basic morality and jurist prudence, but on procedures that violated every principle of human rights in any country including Ireland.

In fact I could not separate the parallels in this case with what has happened to law and order here starting at random with the Ian Bailey case where trial by media also believed they had sure and certain case along with the bogger cops in his prosecution. The biggest evidence that both heralded to the world was that Ian was a ‘self confessed’ suspect. I bet that fine upstanding teenager felt the same way for not only was he a self confessed suspect but he also signed a confession to prove it. The black man that masqueraded as a cop for years that forced him to sign it was more than an Uncle Tom but a co-conspirator in the perversion of the most basic tenets of justice that the western world calls Law and Order, who had also beaten and bullied that child to sign on his dotted line.

Then I got to thinking about whistleblowers in the Police force, but there were none in this case; that came from a different perspective and profession: their names was Patrick Mc Guinness along with his partner Ann Fennell, both public defenders for this child.

Patrick was a tour de force exposing over and over again the lack of even basic junior detective work of bone chilling ineptness by runaway narcissistic detectives who could not detect a lone cow in a small field in Connemara but whose eyes were on a bigger prize. Their quaffed hair, the ones that had hair, and smarmy smiles without the good looks, were pummeled by Patrick to faces of confusion, doubt, fear and guilt from being finally exposed of been the lower forms of rancid human beings that they were; who were willing to send a child to prison for life or the gas chamber for his death not to serve justice or even revenge, or even real racial prejudice, but for promotion, fame, and accolade. 

They have received infamy instead but little else in the way of punishment. The greater institutional forces of law and order saw to that but at least the child accused had been restored to his family, and because of the work of Patrick and Ann, the real killer was finally brought to justice.

All of my life I have admired courage that went against the rabid crowd or mob, and as time went on I despaired that it was sadly lacking in today’s world but that could also be symptomatic of just getting older. My real life heroes had passed on long before and were found only in well- thumbed books who were led by Clarence Darrow and Winston Churchill. These two helped refine my moral code and when I saw Patrick Mc Guinness in action I saw both influences in him too. He argued like Darrow and in his closing argument, he invoked Winston Churchill in his opening statement.

I want to close now with one quote from the same great man in homage to Patrick and Ann for standing up against the remnants and shambles of what is still weighed on the much lauded scales of justice in most democratic countries; to stand up without bending or given to immoral compromise, who explain justice in tandem with political and individual gain as a bad marriage: “Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party.”  Not knowing the difference is worse than both.

Barry Clifford