The brother of a man fatally shot by a family member, who opened fire on him with a submachine gun in his own front garden, has said his sibling was a \u201cdecent, honest man\u201d who paid the ultimate price for meeting people involved in the drugs trade. <\/p>\n
The court heard during Friday\u2019s sentence hearing for gunman Christopher Devine, who was sentenced to the mandatory term of life imprisonment, that his brother-in-law through marriage, Michael Tormey, was \u201cnever in his life involved in criminal activity\u201d and had made \u201ca serious error of judgment\u201d getting involved with \u201cthese people\u201d but was only around them for \u201ca short period\u201d.<\/p>\n
In his victim impact statement, Patrick Tormey, the younger brother of the deceased man, told the Central Criminal Court that one of the most hurtful aspects of the trial was listening to the details of how his sibling was \u201ccoldly murdered\u201d and that \u201csome of the details revealed\u201d were \u201chard to accept\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr Tormey said his brother was not a criminal but \u201ca good, decent man with an honest and happy attitude towards life\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen he met these people, it was the beginning of the end for Michael and he paid the ultimate price with his life,\u201d Mr Tormey said.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, a jury convicted Devine, a father of six, of murder, finding he was not suffering from a \u201csubstance-induced psychotic disorder\u201d after \u201cshovelling\u201d cocaine into himself when he opened fire on Mr Tormey.<\/p>\n
Devine told garda\u00ed in his interviews that he stood best man for Mr Tormey and that he and the deceased had been engaged in drug-related activity by \u201cshifting a bit of stuff for lads\u201d. <\/p>\n
The defendant went on to say \u201ccoke or whatever\u201d when asked to elaborate by officers during his interviews. However, he said that he and Mr Tormey had \u201ckind of got out\u201d of the \u201cdrugs business\u201d.<\/p>\n
Devine (44), with an address at Convent Lawns, Kylemore Road, Ballyfermot in Dublin, 10 had pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to the manslaughter of Mr Tormey (49) at Thomond Road in Ballyfermot in the early hours of January 9th, 2022.<\/p>\n
Mr Tormey was struck by five bullets in his front garden. They went through his body, causing bleeding, rib fractures and partial lung collapse.<\/p>\n
Defence counsel Aoife O\u2019Leary BL told the court on Friday that her client had asked her to convey his remorse and regret about his actions that night.<\/p>\n
Handing down the mandatory term of life imprisonment for murder, Ms Justice Melanie Greally said the victim impact statement conveyed the \u201chuge devastation\u201d caused to so many lives from Devine\u2019s \u201cbrutal act of murder\u201d.<\/p>\n
The judge described it as an \u201cact of immense brutality and treachery conducted in Mr Tormey\u2019s home\u201d. She said the only benefit that comes from \u201cthe cold process of a murder trial\u201d is when the family of the deceased \u201chave a voice\u201d and are able to \u201cset the record straight\u201d after a conviction is returned.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s been done by Patrick Tormey and that is the only satisfaction that can come,\u201d said the judge, adding that the court conveyed its sympathies \u201cto all those affected by this horrible death\u201d.<\/p>\n
The jury panel had rejected Devine\u2019s defence that he should be found guilty of manslaughter because he had a mental disorder that would have diminished his capacity to control himself.<\/p>\n
They also rejected his contention that he was so intoxicated from taking \u201cindustrial quantities\u201d of cocaine, combined with large amounts of alcohol that he couldn\u2019t have formed an intention to kill or cause serious injury.<\/p>\n
Instead the jurors accepted the case argued by Garret Baker SC, for the Director of Public Prosecutions, that Devine\u2019s mind was functioning as he had acted deliberately in the build-up to, as well as in the aftermath of, the killing of Mr Tormey.<\/p>\n
The trial heard evidence that Devine drove to the victim\u2019s home and shot him five times before walking back to his car and spinning the wheels as he made his escape. Devine repeatedly denied to garda\u00ed that he murdered Mr Tormey, while the weapon used \u2013 a MP5 pattern submachine gun \u2013 was never recovered.<\/p>\n
The court heard that Devine has no psychiatric history and had never taken any psychiatric medication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The brother of a man fatally shot by a family member, who opened fire on him with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":201405,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[42851,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-201404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-central-criminal-court","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201404\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}