Laura Dempsey pleaded guilty to assisting an offender

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

Laura Dempsey pleaded guilty to assisting an offender at the Central Criminal Court. The proceedings were reported on 11 July 2016. The report said she had been arraigned the previous month.

She was charged with impeding the apprehension or prosecution of the person she believed was guilty of murdering 33-year-old Kieran Farrelly on 26 October 2014. The offence included assisting in the concealment of a shotgun used in the killing at Killarney Court, Killarney Street.

Dempsey had also been charged with murder, but that charge was dismissed following her application under Section 4E of the Criminal Justice Act 1999.

Dominic McGinn SC, prosecuting, told Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy that the maximum sentence for assisting an offender was 10 years. The judge said she needed time to consider the material submitted and remanded Dempsey in custody for sentencing the following Monday.

A psychiatric report submitted to the court detailed ongoing flashbacks of the shooting and showed that Dempsey had been admitted to hospital for clinical depression a week before the killing. Mitigation submissions said many aggravating features commonly associated with such offences were absent, her possession of the weapon was transient and she had made full admissions voluntarily. They also asserted a pronounced element of duress as a powerful mitigating factor.