AN IRISHMAN HAS been ordered to ‘self-deport’ from the United States after a court convicted him of a charge he had already spent time in prison for.
Paschal Delahunty was sentenced on Friday at a court hearing at Bergen County Justice Centre, in Hackensack, New Jersey, to the 388 days he had already served in prison for using a fake identification in trying to obtain a new driver’s licence, northjersey.com reports.
Delahunty, a 52-year-old father of three, remains the primary person of interest regarding his wife Liza’s disappearance in 2007 according to retired Emerson, New Jersey, detective George Buono.
Liza Murphy disappeared on 19 August 2007 after being confronted by Delahunty regarding her allegedly being unfaithful to him.
In his one conversation with police at the time, Delahunty claimed that he had been recording his wife’s phone conversations.
Ms Murphy’s disappearance prompted a massive 200-officer strong hunt for her body, which was never found.
No physical evidence was ever found to implicate Delahunty in her disappearance.
The charge of using a false identity with which Delahunty was convicted arose as a result of the investigation into her disappearance.
Delahunty had been using the alias Joseph Murphy, the name of a deceased friend of his who passed away in 2001, since becoming a US citizen officially in 1990.
Prosecutors first became aware of the deception in December 2014 according to a report from CBS.
Last month he pled guilty to using a counterfeit driver’s licence in the name of Joseph Murphy when he went to renew that licence in 2013.
During Friday’s hearing Judge James J Guida ordered Delahunty to self-deport within two weeks or face five years imprisonment.
According to his lawyer Joseph Raia, Delahunty has purchased a ticket to take him from JFK Airport in New York to Dublin next Tuesday, 19 January.
Where Delahunty is from in Ireland is not currently known.
When he arrives in Ireland he will report to the US embassy here “just to acknowledge that his is, in fact, in Ireland” said Raia.
“He’s lost his family, in essence,” said Raia during the hearing.
He’s lost his privilege to be in the United States, regardless of how he obtained it. He’s a broken man at this point. Everything has been taken from him. There’s nothing more that we can take from him.
Comments are closed on this article.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say