A jury will begin their deliberations in the trial of a man who stabbed his housemate to death, where although the prosecution says he should be found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity, the defence “is in the usual position” of arguing he has “some criminal responsibility” and should be found guilty of manslaughter.
“You would expect it to be reversed; for the defence to be saying there is no liability and the prosecution saying there is,” counsel for Sean Murphy told the jury on Tuesday.
Tony McGillicuddy, for the Director of Public Prosecutions, told the jury of six men and six women that two eminent consultant psychiatrists had told them that Mr Murphy was suffering from a severe mental disorder when he stabbed Michael Olohan to death. He said the doctors had differed only on how severely the mental disorder was damaging or impacting Mr Murphy’s mental health.
One, counsel said, had stated that the accused was psychotic and unable to resist the killing while the other said Mr Murphy could have resisted although his capacity was substantially diminished. If the jury accepts, on the balance of probabilities, that Mr Murphy was psychotic and unable to resist, the correct verdict is not guilty by reason of insanity, Mr McGillicuddy said.
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If they find that it is more likely that Mr Murphy could have resisted but his responsibility was substantially diminished by his mental illness, the correct verdict is manslaughter due to diminished responsibility. Counsel said it is a difficult and sad case but he urged the jury to “approach it in a sober and clinical manner” and having reviewed the evidence, to come to the appropriate conclusions.
Defence counsel Michael O’Higgins said that a finding of guilty of murder would be “perverse” given the psychiatric evidence. He said the defence is in the “unusual” position of saying Mr Murphy has “some criminal responsibility” and should be found guilty of manslaughter, while the prosecution is arguing for a not guilty by reason of insanity verdict.
He suggested that the jury should favour the manslaughter verdict and asked the members to give their deliberations “the very clear attention you have already given from the moment you sat down”.
Mr Murphy (29) with an address at Bradóg Court, St Lawrence Road, Clontarf, Dublin 3, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Michael Olohan (35) at the apartment they shared on St Lawrence Road on August 13th, 2020. Mr Olohan is originally from Poppintree in Ballymun, north Dublin. The jury has been told that at the time of the stabbing the accused and deceased lived together at Bradóg Court in a “step-down independent living facility” run by St Vincent’s hospital psychiatric services.
Ronan Kennedy, for the prosecution, told the jury in his opening speech that Mr Olohan had lived there for some years while Mr Murphy moved in four months previously having been discharged from the psychiatric ward of St Vincent’s hospital.
Mr McGillicuddy reminded the jury of the evidence of State Pathologist Dr Heidi Okkers who identified three stab wounds to Mr Olohan’s chest, one of which penetrated the right lung, causing severe bleeding and a loss of blood pressure that caused his death.
Within minutes of the stabbing, Mr Murphy arrived at Clontarf Garda station in a bloodstained T-shirt and wearing no shoes. He told gardaí that he had stabbed someone, saying, “I just got these sick thoughts, I used a knife, I’m really sick.”
He explained that he gets ideas where he believes he has to do certain things or “bad things will happen”. He later said: “I got a bad thought I had to attack Michael with the knife even though I didn’t want to”. Mr McGillicuddy told the jury that two psychiatrists who gave evidence in the trial agreed that Mr Murphy was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) as a teenager.
They agreed that OCD is a mental disorder and at the time of the stabbing it was “affecting his mental reasoning, thinking and mental health in a very substantial and severe way”. Both had described the symptoms of OCD by explaining that sufferers develop obsessions that cause them to feel compelled to act in particular ways.
In Mr Murphy’s case, he believed that he had to kill someone to prevent himself from going to hell for eternity. Counsel said that Dr Ronan Mullaney, who was called by the prosecution, said that Mr Murphy’s OCD was accompanied by psychotic symptoms that caused him to be unable to resist killing Mr Olohan. Dr Mullaney’s evidence was that Mr Murphy should be found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Prof Keith Rix disagreed with Dr Mullaney on how severely the mental disorder was damaging or impacting Mr Murphy’s mental health at the time, Mr McGillicuddy said. The Prof did not believe Mr Murphy was psychotic and said that he was able to resist the killing.
However, Prof Rix found that Mr Murphy’s responsibility was substantially diminished by OCD and he should therefore be found not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter. Mr McGillicuddy suggested that the jury should “prefer the evidence of Dr Mullaney”.
He said Dr Mullaney had carried out “a more complete evaluation of the circumstances, he had all the relevant paperwork, he reviewed those things and set out his opinion to you and properly supported it at each limb along the way”.
The conclusions of Prof Rix, counsel said, “are not as sturdy or to be accepted over those of Dr Mullaney, because he didn’t have sight of all the materials and accepted that would weaken the strength of his opinion”.
The jury will begin their deliberations on Wednesday.