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Gilligan sentence cut to 20 years

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

Gilligan was originally sentenced in 2001 by the three-judge, no-jury Special Criminal Court that is normally used for terrorist offenses but sometimes hears high-profile criminal cases.
Though he was acquitted of murdering journalist Veronica Guerin, who was gunned down in her car by two men on a motorbike in June 1996, the Appeal Court found the severity of the sentence was related to the fact that he had been charged with the killing.
“The court is concerned that the Special Criminal Court appeared to have erred in principle in not restricting itself to the individual charges which were proved,” it ruled.
It said the language used in the judgment of the Special Court “would certainly seem to imply that the court had overstepped the line between considering surrounding circumstances and in effect sentencing for criminal activities of which the applicant had not been convicted.”
Gilligan was arrested at London’s Heathrow Airport on his way to Amsterdam carrying

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