The Maamtransa murders: The trial of Myles Joyce
Hanly, Conor
Hanly, Conor
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Publication Date
2022-05-19
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book part
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Hanly, Conor. (2020). The Maamtransa murders: The trial of Myles Joyce. In David Nash & and Anne-Marie Kilday (Eds.), Fair and Unfair Trials in the British Isles, 1800-1940 (pp. 99-116). London: Bloomsbury.
Abstract
In 1882, five members of the Joyce family were brutally murdered in a rural part of western Ireland. The Crown prosecuted a group of men for the murders; utilising all its trial powers and privileges, the Crown secured convictions against three men who were sentenced to death, and another five men changed their pleas to guilty and ultimately were sentenced to imprisonment for twenty years. A controversy developed shortly afterwards and continues to this day concerning one of the executed men, Myles Joyce, who was and is widely regarded as being innocent of the charges. This chapter considers the principal procedural issues that arose during the Maamtrasna trials and shows that the Crown’s actions were entirely within the contemporary trial procedures. This does not mean that the trial and execution of Myles Joyce was necessarily fair, however; the aggregation of the Crown’s tactics, combined with a poor defence and a slanted judicial summary, together with information that came to the attention of the executive authority prior to Myles Joyce’s execution, suggest that an innocent man was indeed executed. Thus, a lawful trial and execution will not necessarily be a fair trial and execution.
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Bloomsbury Academic
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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International