The Gazette 1990

GAZETTE

SEPTEMBER 1990

Co. Limerick. Over a period of years he developed a number of grievances. He believed that his children were being ill treated by neighbours, that a case in which gypsies trespassed on his land was not dealt with properly, and finally that he was being swindled over the sale of part of his land. He believed that he had been ill treated by a series of solicitors and an influential political family in Limerick. He decided that hemust find a forum to publicise his grievances and came to the conclusion that such an opport- unity would present itself if he was brought to court on some charge. He, therefore, drdve his car without a licence and managed to bring the Gardai's attention to the fact. He then refused to pay the fine and was charged. He had prepared a lengthy statement of his grievances but when he started to read it out the judge stopped him. He decided that a more serious charge and higher court was necessary and he next thought of shooting one of the solicitors and got agun, but at the last minute could not bring himself to shoot and went to the Guards and told them the story. On their advice he was admitted to Limerick Mental Hosptial for a brief period. The general idea however had not left his mind and on 15th October, 1965, after leaving his children to school he came home, severely beat his wife about the head with a spanner or wrench and went immediately to the Guards to report the matter and gave himself up. She died the next day. He was clearly mentally disturbed and was committed to Dundrum. He was initially regarded as unfit to plead but demanded a trial of the issue by jury and was found fit to plead.

I examined him before the trial and gave evidence that he was suf- fering from paranoid schizophrenia. He conducted his own defence. Mr. Justice Henchy, in reply to an issue raised by Mr. TonyHederman, Counsel for the Attorney General, stated:- "However, legal insanity does not necessarily coincide with what medical men would call insanity, but if it is open to the jury to say, as say they must, on the evidence, that this man understood the nature and quality of his act and understood its wrongfulness, morally and legally, but that nevertheless he was debarred from refraining from assaulting his wife fatally because of a defect of reason, due to his mental illness, it seems to me that it would be un- just, in the circumstances of this case, not to allow the jury to consider the case on those grounds". A year later there was the case of James Coughlan, a young man who attacked a twelve year old boy and his eight year old sister while they were walking beside a stream at Ballyclough, Co. Limerick. He had knocked them into the river and had held the boy under water until he drowned. I examined him and came to the conclusion that he was suffering from schizophrenia, and that although he knew that the nature of what he was doing was wrong he did not have a normal control over his impulses. I gave evidence to that effect in court. Mr. Justice Kenny agreed to leave the issue of insanity to the jury in the same form in which it had been dealt with in the Hayes case. He told the jury that they could ask themselves "was the act caused by disease of the mind". They brought in a verdict of guilty but

insane after an absence of ten minutes. The subject is very well dealt with in an article called "Not Guilty Because of Insanity" by Professor Rory O'Hanlon in the Summer, 1968 issue of "The Irish Jurist". This seems to be the present state of the law here, as it was en- dorsed in a judgment of the Supreme Court delivered by Mr. Justice Griffin in Doyle -v- Wicklow County Council in 1973. 1 This concerned a case in which a youth named O'Toole burned down some abattoirs. He admitted that he had done so as a means of protest against the slaughter of animals in the belief that he was justified in doing so because of his love for animals and his conviction that humans did not need animals for food and that nobody should kill them. He knew that his act was one forbidden by society and contrary to law. When I saw him he was in my opinion clearly suffering from schizophrenia and was unfit to plead. At a later stage the pro- prietor of the abattoir, Mr. Doyle, brought an action against the Wicklow County Council claiming compensation. A Circuit Court judge submitted certain questions of law for determination by the Supreme Court, one of which was whether in deciding the issue of insanity, raised in the criminal injury application, he should apply the standards or rules appropriate to criminal trial. In the course of the judgment given by Mr. Justice Griffin in referring to the Hayes case he stated "I would adopt what was said by Mr. Justice Henchy as being a correct state- ment of law in this matter, and in my view it provides the correct test

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