Ireland quashes Omagh bombing conviction News
Ireland quashes Omagh bombing conviction

[JURIST] An Irish appeals court Friday quashed the only criminal conviction stemming from the 1998 Omagh bombing [BBC file report; BBC backgrounder] which killed twenty-nine people and injured hundreds more in the largest terror attack in the history of the Northern Ireland "troubles". Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Real IRA [BBC backgrounder]. The Court of Criminal Appeal [official website] in Dublin granted a retrial to Colm Murphy, who was sentenced in 2002 to 14 years in prison by Ireland's anti-terrorist Special Criminal Court [official website] for providing cell phones to a terrorist organization. The quashed conviction was based on the original court's mishandling of evidence from two Irish detectives, who added false statements to handwritten interrogation notes, and because the original court had made illegal references to Murphy's previous convictions. AP has more. RTE, the Irish public broadcaster, provides extensive local coverage from Dublin.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, murdered by Henry II's knights

On December 29, 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by knights acting in the name of Henry II.

Becket and Henry had been entangled in a power struggle over, among other things, criminal jurisdiction over clergy. Read a contemporary account of the murder of Thomas Becket.

Texas attains US statehood

On December 29, 1845, Texas became the twenty-eighth state to join the United States of America when US President James K. Polk signed the Ordinance of Annexation. Texas had a complicated path to statehood because it had formerly been part of Mexico and then an independent republic. The US Congress passed the Annexation of the Republic of Texas Joint Resolution on March 1, 1845. Voters in Texas then approved the Ordinance of Annexation in October, before it was approved by the US Congress and signed into law by President Polk on this day in 1845. The US Supreme Court later ruled in Texas v. White that, despite its unique path to statehood, Texas did not have the right to secede from the union.