This episode appears to be based on the 1991 Joe Doherty case. Doherty, a former volunteer in the Belfast Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), escaped during his 1981 trial for killing a member of the Special Air Service (SAS) in 1980. He was arrested in the United States in 1983, and became a cause celebrity while fighting an ultimately unsuccessful nine-year legal battle against extradition and deportation, with a street corner in New York City being named after him.
The deaths of Mrs McDeardon's husband and child is partially her husband's fault. O'Donnell wouldn't have been second degree responsible for his and the children's deaths, if the man hadn't been so foolish. A man RAN AWAY from a POLICE vehicle and PURPOSELY left his satchel next to it; that should have been enough alone to be suspicious, not be a good Samaritan.