This article is from page 17 of the 2011-10-11 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 17 JPG
LIKE a hare that escaped the greyhounds is how Judge Joseph Mangan has this week described his retirement.
In his first interview since his retirement, the 66-year-old told The Clare People that his “initial feeling is like the hare that has got to escape before the grounds come. I am relieved to get to the finish line before I got the sack.”
“I’ve been on the bench for 27 years. It’s a long time to spend at it. I think I have worked very hard. I have had enough. I’m of retirement age. I could have retired last year if I wanted to. The job isn’t getting any easier. The volume of work has increased enormously,” he said.
“I’d feel very cheated if I didn’t get to enjoy a few years of retirement,” he said.
He said that he gave informal notice of his intention to retire at the end of July but the President of the District Court asked him to reconsider and defer his final decision until September.
“I did so and I gave formal notice of retirement in the first or second week of September,” he said.
During his time as a District Court Judge, he has always aimed to remain objective and remain detached, something that was not always possible. “The judge’s mind is a clinical mind… By and large you don’t bring it home with you and the same ap- plies to prejudices. You don’t bring it on to the bench with you. When you are on the bench you are more concerned with implementing the law in a just way, if you can, than you are about implementing an agenda. It’s not the function of a judge to be a crusader,” he said.
“Maybe it’s selfish of me but I was always more concerned about whether I had done the job properly than I was about the sadness of the story.
“You just couldn’t survive in this game if you reacted to every sad story the same as some sentimental person who always brings a handkerchief to the cinema.
“There was one young man I knew who came before me for quite a serious charge. It was not going to be dealt with in the District Court so there was no reason for me to disqualify myself from the case. I had met him when he was a child. He was one of the most mannerly little kids I met.
“When he came before me I found that hard to take. Most people who came before me were for a speeding summons or a bald tyre. They are not hanging offences. There is no problem about that,” he said.
After travelling the country as a moveable judge for more than 17 years, he was appointed to District Number 12 – which covers Clare and parts of Galway – in 2001. He has seen plenty of changes over the years.
“My coming here [to Ennis] coin- cided with the take-off of the Celtic Tiger. Whatever changes I saw it is difficult to discern whether they were caused by the advent of the Celtic Tiger or whether they were specific to this district. Certainly public order cases increased in the district around that time. I think the answer is probably a combination of both [the introduction of the Public Order Act and the Celtic Tiger],” he said.
“I think there has been a very noticeable decline in public order cases in the last three to four years, pre- sumably because a lot of young people have left the country. In relation to drugs, the drugs squad locally are very alert to what’s going on. One thing that has to be a cause for great concern is that when people had a lot of money the tendency was to use softer and safer drugs. Now that money is scarce, we are seeing more of the harder drugs,” he said.
He has seen the family law courts becoming busier in recent years, but said, “Just because the volume of family law cases has increased in the courts, doesn’t mean there has been an exacerbation in family law problems. There were always family law problems but in the past there was greater tendency for people to suffer in silence.”
Over the years, he has had to disqualify himself from hearing cases, due to his acquaintance with defendants.
“That was very simple. In a parking court I would have no problem dealing with my grandmother because she would be one of 50 people who are all dealt with in a similar way. In a family court if you have the slightest acquaintance with a person you don’t touch the case.
“Other cases are in between. Sometimes I would disqualify myself. Sometimes I would deal with the case,” he said.
“What no judge appreciates is being ambushed in court, observing a defendant in court flanked by one or two mutual acquaintances lest that the judge might not know who the defendant was, the acquaintances often being pillars of the community,” he added.
“There are occasions when somebody will try to bully the court. Sometimes fire must be met with fire,” he said.
Throughout his career, several of his rulings have been overturned by a higher court. “It’s just another person’s opinion.
“That person is entitled to his or her opinion as I am entitled to mine. I have my day’s work to do. If there is an appeal, the case becomes somebody else’s problem,” he said.
“I never worried about giving decisions in criminal cases. If I had a doubt I would dismiss the case. The law states you must have a reasonable doubt. I have to confess I never quite knew the difference between a doubt and a reasonable doubt,” he said.
“I never worried unduly about wronging the State in a criminal matter because the price we pay for a half civilized legal system is that 1,000 guilty men must walk free to ensure that we don’t convict the innocent man.
“Even with the system we have, innocent people still get convicted,” he said.
“Wronging an individual is another matter and that troubles me as I’m sure it troubles all my colleagues. One would especially want to get it right in a family case. It’s not always easy,” he added.