State bids to dismiss damages claim by man wrongly convicted of 1980 garda murder

The State sought dismissal of a damages claim brought by a man whose conviction for the 1980 murders of two gardaí in Ballaghadreen, County Roscommon, was quashed after nearly fifteen years imprisonment. The applicant had been convicted by the Special Criminal Court and initially received a death sentence, later commuted to forty years. The Court of Criminal Appeal found his conviction unsafe and unsatisfactory in…