Born in Boyle, Co. Roscommon, Patrick Moran lived most of his adult life in Dublin where he took an active part in the GAA, the Gaelic League, the Trade Unions and the Irish Volunteers. He was an active participant in the 1916 Rising and was deported to England after the surrender. On his return in August 1916 he renewed his interest in football and hurling, became a founder member of the Grocers, Vintners and Allied Trades Assistants and he helped to reorganise the Volunteers in Dublin and in his native Roscommon. He was arrested following the assassinations of British Intelligence Officers in Dublin on Bloody Sunday, 21 November 1920, and was finally charged and convicted by a court martial for the murder of Lieutenants Ames and Bennett. He was executed by hanging in March 1921 amid calls from civil and religious leaders for the King of England to exercise the Prerogative of Mercy in an upsurge of overwhelming belief that he was innocent. But was he?

Présentation de l'éditeur : "During the Irish Civil War eighty-three executions were carried out by the National Army of the emerging Free State government, including four prisoners not tried or convicted of any charge. After the war the trial records were destroyed and the execution policy became a bitter memory that was rarely discussed. In this groundbreaking work, Seán Enright examines how a climate emerged in which prisoners could be tried by rudimentary military courts and then executed, and how so many other prisoners were killed without any trial at all. The government of the emerging state relied on the National Army to fight the war and implement policy, but the National Army was new and lacked discipline. More than 125 further prisoners were killed in the custody of the state; shot at the point of capture or killed in custody. 'Shot while trying to escape' became an all too familiar press release. Seventeen prisoners were killed in the Kerry landmine massacres alone. In the struggle to survive, the new state turned a blind eye and the rule of law simply unravelled. Featuring new material from the Irish Military Archives, The Irish Civil War: Law, Execution and Atrocity examines the dark legacy of this chaotic and bitter conflict."

Born in Boyle, Co. Roscommon, Patrick Moran lived most of his adult life in Dublin where he took an active part in the GAA, the Gaelic League, the Trade Unions and the Irish Volunteers. He was an active participant in the 1916 Rising and was deported to England after the surrender. On his return in August 1916 he renewed his interest in football and hurling, became a founder member of the Grocers, Vintners and Allied Trades Assistants and he helped to reorganise the Volunteers in Dublin and in his native Roscommon. He was arrested following the assassinations of British Intelligence Officers in Dublin on Bloody Sunday, 21 November 1920, and was finally charged and convicted by a court martial for the murder of Lieutenants Ames and Bennett. He was executed by hanging in March 1921 amid calls from civil and religious leaders for the King of England to exercise the Prerogative of Mercy in an upsurge of overwhelming belief that he was innocent. But was he?

Justice, Mercy, and Caprice is a work of criminal justice history that speaks to the gradual emergence of a more humane Irish state. It is a close examination of the decision to grant clemency to men and women sentenced to death between the end of the civil war in 1923 and the abolition of capital punishment in 1990. Frequently, the decision to deflect the law from its course was an attempt to introduce a measure of justice to a system where the mandatory death sentence for murder caused predictable unfairness and undue harshness. In some instances the decision to spare a life sprang from merciful motivations. In others it was capricious, depending on factors that should have had no place in the government's decision-making calculus. The custodial careers of those whose lives were spared repay scrutiny. Women tended to serve relatively short periods in prison but were often transferred to a religious institution where their confinement continued, occasionally for life. Men, by contrast, served longer in prison but were discharged directly to the community. Political offenders were either executed hastily or, when the threat of capital punishment had passed, incarcerated for extravagant periods. This book addresses issues that are of continuing relevance for countries that employ capital punishment. It will appeal to scholars with an interest in criminal justice history, executive discretion, and death penalty studies, as well as being a useful resource for students of penology.

Sixteen men were executed in the aftermath of the Easter Rising in Ireland, 1916: fifteen were shot and one was hanged. Their deaths changed the course of Irish history. But who were these leaders who set in motion events that would lead to the creation of an independent Ireland? Teachers, poets, trade unionists, a shopkeeper, and a farmer, the executed leaders of the Easter Rising were a diverse group. This book contains fascinating accounts of the life stories of these men and recounts the events that brought each of them to rebellion in April 1916. All these stories are compiled for the first time in one volume, making it an ideal overview for the history enthusiast and a good introduction for the general reader.

On 1 November 1920, eighteen-year-old UCD medical student Kevin Barry was hanged in Dublin’s Mountjoy Jail for his role in a bungled IRA operation in which three British soldiers were killed. To this day, he remains a vibrant and celebrated icon of patriotic, idealistic death, his name synonymous with youthful republican sacrifice. His life was short, but Kevin was more than a hapless teen swept away in the revolutionary maelstrom of the time. Here, Professor Eunan O’Halpin, a grand-nephew of Barry, accesses exclusive family records and other archives to explore Kevin’s republicanism and the endurance of his memory, one hundred years on from his untimely death. Kevin’s humorous letters show a rounded, irreverent and humane schoolboy and young man, while British records confirm his laconic heroism as he bravely awaited his inevitable execution. From his unique vantage point, O’Halpin also considers Barry’s death in parallel with those other Irishmen who died for the republican cause within days of his own, how his background challenged assumptions about those who fought for Irish independence, and the lasting legacy of having ‘a martyr in the family’.

This book takes a look at young Michael Manning and the events that lead to the death of an elderly woman and Manning's hanging.

Between 1923 and 1954 the Irish state executed twenty-nine people convicted of murder. Almost all executions were carried out in the hanghouse of Mountjoy Prison by members of the Pierrepoint family. The often shocking and fascinating stories of these men and one woman have been largely forgotten. Their remains lie behind prison walls as strange testaments to an abandoned form of punishment. Among those buried in Mountjoy are Bernard Kirwan, convicted of killing his brother, though a body was never conclusively identified. Kirwan's presence in Mountjoy Prison and his execution inspired Brendan Behan's play 'The Quare Fellow'. Also there lie Henry McCabe, convicted of killing six people in a house in Malahide, and Annie Walsh, convicted of murdering her husband for compensation money. Few had ever been convicted of a crime before each was convicted of the most serious of all. The voices of some seem to whisper from the unmarked graves that it was not they who carried out the crime as doubts remain about the safety of some of the convictions. 'Hanged for Murder' tells their stories, some in graphic detail, for the first time.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • SOON TO BE AN FX LIMITED SERIES STREAMING ON HULU • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • From the author of Empire of Pain—a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions. One of The New York Times’s 20 Best Books of the 21st Century "Masked intruders dragged Jean McConville, a 38-year-old widow and mother of 10, from her Belfast home in 1972. In this meticulously reported book—as finely paced as a novel—Keefe uses McConville's murder as a prism to tell the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Interviewing people on both sides of the conflict, he transforms the tragic damage and waste of the era into a searing, utterly gripping saga." —New York Times Book Review "Reads like a novel ... Keefe is ... a master of narrative nonfiction. . .An incredible story."—Rolling Stone A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, TIME, NPR, and more! Jean McConville's abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress--with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes. Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders. From radical and impetuous I.R.A. terrorists such as Dolours Price, who, when she was barely out of her teens, was already planting bombs in London and targeting informers for execution, to the ferocious I.R.A. mastermind known as The Dark, to the spy games and dirty schemes of the British Army, to Gerry Adams, who negotiated the peace but betrayed his hardcore comrades by denying his I.R.A. past--Say Nothing conjures a world of passion, betrayal, vengeance, and anguish.

Some beg for forgiveness. Others claim innocence. At least three cheer for their favorite football teams. Death waits for us all, but only those sentenced to death know the day and the hour—and only they can be sure that their last words will be recorded for posterity. Last Words of the Executed presents an oral history of American capital punishment, as heard from the gallows, the chair, and the gurney. The product of seven years of extensive research by journalist Robert K. Elder, the book explores the cultural value of these final statements and asks what we can learn from them. We hear from both the famous—such as Nathan Hale, Joe Hill, Ted Bundy, and John Brown—and the forgotten, and their words give us unprecedented glimpses into their lives, their crimes, and the world they inhabited. Organized by era and method of execution, these final statements range from heartfelt to horrific. Some are calls for peace or cries against injustice; others are accepting, confessional, or consoling; still others are venomous, rage-fueled diatribes. Even the chills evoked by some of these last words are brought on in part by the shared humanity we can’t ignore, their reminder that we all come to the same end, regardless of how we arrive there. Last Words of the Executed is not a political book. Rather, Elder simply asks readers to listen closely to these voices that echo history. The result is a riveting, moving testament from the darkest corners of society.