Sentenced to Death Saved from the Gallows by Colm Wallace

Ireland has had a bitter history of capital punishment. Long before we became a nation, the British had used the death penalty to quell the dissent of the Irish population. Padraig Pearse, James Connolly and Robert Emmer are among those Irish heroes who were hanged, shot or beheaded by the British Government. It is not therefore surprising that the Irish had planned to abolish the hangman, the original draft of the constitution even prohibiting the death penalty. However the bloody and divisive Civil War soon changed minds.

Many Irish citizens still viewed the punishment with distaste, nevertheless, and an Irish hangman was never used. A succession of English hangmen, most notably the Pierrepoints, were employed to perform the grim task, and were often met off the boat by large jeering crowds.

Between 1922 and 1990, a huge number of people convicted of murder had the death sentence imposed on them by the Irish State. The motivations for the murders varied from lust to greed, jealousy to hatred. The result of each case however, was the same. All of the protagonists were found guilty, given a date of execution and banished to a condemned call in Mountjoy prison. A number of the unfortunate individuals met their fate at the end of the rope. The majority, however, had their sentences commuted, many just hours before they were due to be hanged. This book examines the stories behind thirty of these reprieved murders.

Pages: 247