On the Nally verdict

I remember waking up one morning in 1992 to the news that an all-white jury in suburban Los Angeles had acquitted four white police officers who were caught on videotape beating the living daylights out of a black man. I remember feeling completely disgusted, sickened and appalled that such a clearly racist verdict could have been handed down. I remember sympathising completely with the anger and outrage expressed by the black community and, finally, I remember profound depression sinking in that things like this could still happen in today's world.

And Rodney King had only been beaten, not killed.

There's no justification for this decision. None. Shooting a retreating, already-wounded man in the back and then beating him with a stick as he lies dying does not fall under any conceivable definition of "defending one's property", nor is it reasonable to believe that such a completely OTT reaction was motivated entirely by fear. It was an act of revenge, it was criminal and it should have been held as such.

And I see once again that Fine Gael, the "law and order" party, have come out in support of Padraig Nally. This of course is the same bunch of hypocrites who never miss an opportunity to accuse republicans of carrying out "vigilante justice". Only this week Enda Kenny was parroting some fantasy, no doubt fed to him by Paul Williams, about "IRA involvement" in the recent shooting of a Finglas drug dealer (who, you'd have to admit, was almost certainly responsible for bringing much more misery into this world than John Ward ever did).

My condolences to the Ward family and the Travelling community as a whole.