Paul Magee - Imprisonment in England

Imprisonment in England

On 31 March 1993 Magee was found guilty of the murder of Special Constable Goodman and the attempted murder of three other police officers, and sentenced to life imprisonment. O'Brien was found guilty of attempted murder and received an eighteen-year sentence. On 9 September 1994 Magee and five other prisoners, including Danny McNamee, escaped from HM Prison Whitemoor. The prisoners, in possession of two guns that had been smuggled into the prison, scaled the prison walls using knotted sheets. A guard was shot and wounded during the escape, and the prisoners were captured after being chased across fields by guards and the police. In 1996 Magee staged a dirty protest in HM Prison Belmarsh, in protest at glass screens separating prisoners from their relatives during visits. Magee had refused to accept visits from his wife and five children for two years, prompting Sinn Féin to accuse the British government of maintaining "a worsening regime that is damaging physically and psychologically". In January 1997 Magee and the other five escapees from Whitemoor were on trial on charges relating to the escape for a second time, four months earlier the first trial had been stopped because of prejudicial publicity. Lawyers for the defendants successfully argued that an article in the Evening Standard prejudiced the trial as it contained photographs of Magee and two other defendants and described them as "terrorists", as an order had been made at the start of the trial preventing any reference to the background and previous convictions of the defendants. Despite the judge saying the evidence against the defendants was "very strong", he dismissed the case stating "What I have done is the only thing I can do in the circumstances. The law for these defendants is the same law for everyone else. They are entitled to that, whatever they have done".