The High Court has refused permission for the brother and sister of murdered Clontarf man Finbar Dennehy to prosecute the Irish Daily Star for criminal libel over articles published shortly after his death.
Tony Dennehy and Irene Poynton applied under section 8 of the Defamation Act 1961 after the newspaper published reports on September 28 and 29, 2007 concerning the circumstances of their brother's death.
Finbar Dennehy's body had been discovered in his Clontarf apartment on September 26. The Garda Press Office reported that he died from a single stab wound. Two days later the Star published a front-page report suggesting gardaí were investigating whether he had been murdered or had died accidentally during a sex act. A further report followed the next day. An individual was subsequently convicted of Dennehy's murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The applicants said the newspaper's claims were wholly untrue, grossly defamatory of their brother and caused his family extreme distress. The respondent did not file an affidavit disputing those claims, but opposed the application on legal grounds.
Gilligan J held that permission to bring a criminal libel prosecution required a clear prima facie case, a sufficiently serious libel and a public interest in invoking the criminal law.
The central difficulty was that the allegedly defamatory statements concerned a deceased person. Reviewing earlier authorities, the judge held that criminal libel in such circumstances required some defamation of living people, even where that arose through statements concerning their deceased relative, together with an intention to injure those living persons.
He found that Tony Dennehy and Irene Poynton had undoubtedly suffered outrage, distress and upset because of what was published about their brother. However, he held that they had not themselves been defamed and that there was no evidence from which an intention by the newspaper to injure them could be established.
As no prima facie criminal libel case had been made out, leave to prosecute was refused.