Incitement to hatred

In most, if not all, the media coverage of the trial of Mayo farmer Pádraig Nally, the murder victim, John (Frog) Ward was portrayed as a violent, drug-fuelled petty criminal. Ward was already known to the gardaí, had 12 sets of convictions and was due in court to face charges for threatening a Garda with a slash hook.

The moot question however is: does this mean he deserved to be shot, beaten violently over the head with an ash stick and, finally, fatally injured while in a crouching position after the perpetrator, farmer Pádraig Nally, had time to draw a breath, reload his shotgun and shoot him in the back?

Nally said in court: "It was like hitting a stone or a badger but you could not kill him." The reality is, the late John Ward was neither a stone nor a badger. He was a human being.

While much of the reportage examined the vulnerability and fears of Nally, who lives at an isolated farm near the tiny village of Cross in south Mayo, none of it focused on the pervading vulnerability, isolation and marginalisation of the country's Travelling community.

"A community on the edge" was the headline in last Saturday's Irish Times. Kathy Sheridan wrote: "The killing of John Ward and the trial of Pádraig Nally has exposed the deep sense of vulnerability felt by locals in this part of Mayo."

What about "the deep sense of vulnerability" felt by Travellers on a daily basis, and further deepened, undoubtedly, by the outcome of this trial?

What faith can young Tom Ward, aged 18, who fled the crime scene, have in the justice system, or in a society that effectively has made a hero of the man who shot his father? Has anybody shown concern about this boy? What future has he?

A day after the fatal shooting on 14 October last, I was in King's grocery shop in Cross. I asked the shopkeeper about local feelings regarding the murder. A customer interrupted: "It's a pity Nally didn't have a double-barrelled shotgun, then he could have got rid of the two of them."

Last week, Mary Ellen Synon, in her Ireland on Sunday column, asked a lawyer: "What [sentence] do you think Nally ought to get?" He replied: "A statue in Castlebar." Synon, herself, said she hoped "the courteous, pleasant and surprisingly brave Nally gets no more than a suspended sentence".

While Synon's prejudices are, from past stances, no surprise, the unidentified lawyer's comments raise more serious questions, and reflect an attitude that has prevailed in higher echelons of the judiciary.

In 1997, western circuit judge Harvey Kenny sentenced a Ballina Traveller to five years' imprisonment for stealing a bag of potatoes, a bale of briquettes, a bag of coal and three bottles of cider. The goods were worth £31. "Shopkeepers have to be defended from people like you," said Kenny, who is notorious for his over-the-top sentencing of Travellers. That judgment was appealed and overturned.

In 2001, Travellers-rights solicitor Kevin Brophy likened another judgement by Kenny to "a dictum from the wild west" after he ordered two Traveller families not to park their caravans within a five-mile radius of Castlebar and a three-mile radius of any other town in the county. One of the families had a number of very sick children and needed to attend the county hospital regularly. A judicial review overturned the judgment.

Brophy said: "I would often know before a Traveller case gets under way whether or not I have a chance of success, depending on the judge."

Brophy said he believes the Nally killing was a race-related crime, comparable to crimes against blacks in the southern states of America.

"If you gave this case as a study project to law students, deleting all references to 'Traveller', I believe 99 per cent of them would conclude it was murder," Brophy said.

"Ward was unarmed, he did not approach Nally with a slash-hook. That would have been 'provocation'. But the fact that Nally first disabled him with a shot, then viciously beat him before reloading his shotgun, raises serious questions."

He said he "absolutely echoed the late Mr Ward's widow in her view that she could never see a similar verdict of manslaughter being handed down if the roles had been reversed".

Rose-Marie Maughan of Mayo Traveller Support Group said: "I think some members of the media should be very ashamed of the way in which they portrayed Mr Ward, the victim, as the monster. They seem to want to justify his death. If two settled people were involved in this case, one a victim, one the accused, I am sure the accused would be portrayed in the media as the monster and not the victim."

The Mayo support group also expressed serious concerns about how media coverage of such sensitive cases can lead to further stereotyping and criminalising of Traveller victims.

Traveller Bernard Sweeney confirmed that he and the Ward family felt it was "them" and not Nally who appeared to be on trial in Castlebar courthouse.

"We felt totally isolated in that courtroom. It was dreadful," Sweeney said.