Colm Deely sentenced for manslaughter after murder conviction overturned

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy sentenced Colm Deely to eight years in prison for manslaughter. The proceedings were reported on 20 March 2017.

The judge said Deely had pleaded guilty to manslaughter at the outset.

Deirdre McCarthy was 43 when she was killed in March 2011. The Court of Appeal subsequently overturned Deely's murder conviction. According to the report, evidence from Khalid Jabbar, the then deputy State pathologist, was considered insufficiently reliable for prosecutors to rely upon.

The judge said a murder prosecution lacked sufficient dependable evidence. Any evidence capable of supporting it appeared discredited, and the prosecution could no longer stand behind it. He said this had led the DPP to make the exceptional decision to consent to overturning the murder conviction.

At the original trial in 2013, Deely claimed he had been lying on Deirdre McCarthy's bed with her when she said she would reveal their relationship to his wife and children. In his account to gardaí, he said he must have rolled over and held her neck, while denying any intention to kill her.

The report described him strangling her in bed, driving her body to the coast and throwing it over a wall towards the sea. Deely said he had not meant any of it to happen.

In deciding the sentence, the judge considered the offence itself, her vulnerability and Deely's breach of her trust. He also weighed the calculated disposal of her body, the devastating impact on her family and his guilty plea.