The Republic's longest-serving prisoner, rapist and murderer John Shaw, is set to bring a fresh legal challenge to secure temporary release from prison after more than 45 years behind bars.
Almost two years ago Shaw (75) won the right for two days’ escorted temporary release a year. However, The Irish Times has learned he has not been granted any release days since then and is now readying a fresh legal challenge.
Sources familiar with Shaw’s case said the British national would go back to the courts in a bid to force the Irish Prison Service to grant him his release days.
The pensioner, who has suffered from poor health in recent years, is highly unlikely to be ever granted full release from prison, though he has engaged with the parole process and has repeatedly applied for full release through that process.
His most recent parole hearings, in the two-year period since winning the right to be temporarily released, concluded he was unsuitable for full release as he still posed a danger to women. However, his continued unsuitability for full release should have no bearing on his right to be temporarily released for two days each year while being escorted by prison officers.
In reply to queries, the Irish Prison Service said it did not comment on individual prisoners’ cases.
Crimes
Shaw has been in custody in Ireland since September 1976, when both he and another English man, Geoffrey Evans, were arrested for the abduction, rape, torture and murder of Elizabeth Plunkett (22) in Wicklow and Mary Duffy (24) in Mayo that year.
Shaw and Evans were both given life sentences at the Central Criminal Court in February 1978. Evans died in 2012 after three years in a vegetative state in the Mater hospital, Dublin, while under 24-hour guard.
Over the years, Shaw has repeatedly tried to secure full release and, in the absence of that, to win the right to temporary release, which is granted to the overwhelming majority of long-sentence prisoners.
In April 2016, the Prison Review Committee noted Shaw was “very frustrated that he has never got a day out of prison in his 38 years in custody… He has no family in Ireland and has only received one family visit over the course of his sentence.”
In 2016 the Parole Board recommended Shaw be granted two days of escorted outings a year, but in November of that year the then minister for justice rejected that recommendation.
Shaw, who is in Arbour Hill prison in Dublin, then took a case to the Court of Appeal in January 2020. Just before the hearing began the then minister for justice, Charlie Flanagan, accepted that Shaw should be permitted two days of temporary release a year, while being escorted by prison officers.
A risk assessment of Shaw five years ago concluded he was at a “high-level risk” for re-offending. He had “poor problem-solving skills; negative emotionality”. He was also found to have a “deviant sexual preference” and harboured “hostility towards women” and had a “lack of concern for others”.
Shaw and Evans, from Lancashire, were on the run when they came to Ireland in 1976. They were being sought for questioning in connection with three rapes in the UK. On arrival in Ireland they were soon arrested for burglary in Co Wicklow and jailed for a short period in Mountjoy Prison, Dublin.
They emerged with the plan of abducting, raping and murdering a “bird” every week. They twice carried out their plan to conclusion and were about to strike again when arrested by members of the now disbanded murder squad in Galway.
