Man sentenced for ‘menacing’ Facebook comment
A Derry man has been convicted of posting a menacing message about a DUP MP on Facebook and has been given a five months suspended prison sentence and fined £500.
Darryl O’Donnell, 31, who is a chef, posted on Facebook that the DUP MP Gregory Campbell ‘should get a bullet in the head’.
The comments were made following statements made by Mr Campbell over the Saville report into Bloody Sunday last June.
The judge said O’Donnell’s comments were menacing and offensive and should not have been posted on Facebook.
The judge said that the DUP MP was entitled to state his opinion whether or not people agreed with what he said.
O’Donnell’s five month prison sentence was suspended for three years.
The judge said that when the defendant opened his mouth ‘he did not seem to engage his brain first’ and said that only for the fact that he had recently got a job he would be going to jail.
Mr Campbell said that just as it is wrong to make menacing comments against an individual using traditional communication tools, it was equally wrong to make the comments through new media.
