A man subjected to sexual abuse as a child, who "lost control" and killed a man making homosexual advances to him, was found not guilty of murder at the Central Criminal Court yesterday.
Sean Bambrick (25), of Loughboy, Kilkenny, had denied the murder but admitted the manslaughter of Mr Michael O'Sullivan (44), of no fixed address, in the grounds of the Mill Hill Holy Missionary Fathers in Kilkenny on April 30th, 1997.
The plea of guilty of manslaughter had not been acceptable to the prosecution. After 10 minutes' deliberation, the jury of nine women and three men returned with the unanimous verdict of not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter.
Mr Justice Smith thanked the jury for their efforts before discharging them.
Previously Mr Kenneth Mills SC, prosecuting, had told the court that on the night of Mr O'Sullivan's death "certain matters" were said and done to the accused which indicated "homosexual advances".
This in turn led to an "uncontrollable reaction on his part and he turned on the deceased and he attacked him, and beat him about the head with a stick".
He said it was for the jury to decide if it was "reasonably possible [that what happened] could have caused him to go as berserk as he did with that man".
Mr John O'Kelly SC, O Lideadha BL for the defence defending, had told the jury Bambrick's father was a "hopeless alcoholic"; when Bambrick was 12 his mother left home for a lesbian relationship and "thereafter was subjected to homosexual child abuse when he was 14, 15 years of age", by his brother, Paul, and later by Paul's male partner.
"He was an extremely vulnerable man and had relatively low intelligence," he said. Mr O'Sullivan had been drinking with Bambrick on the night of his death and had said he "fancied Mr Bambrick and Mr Bambrick pushed him away".
Mr O'Sullivan pressed the front of his body from the waist down against Mr Bambrick's lower body at his back before being pushed away. Mr O'Sullivan then turned and urinated on a tree and Bambrick was "overwhelmed by certain memories and lost control of himself and struck [him] several times on the face."
The State Pathologist, Prof John Harbison, had previously told the court Mr O'Sullivan died from asphyxiation as a result of inhaled blood, coupled with head injuries.
He said a conscious person could cough up blood "and it was the bleeding from the mouth and his unconscious state that sealed this gentleman's fate".
Dr Harbison said when he first approached the scene he "could smell alcoholic drink off the corpse". There was between three and four times the legal driving limit of alcohol in his blood.
He found a stake broken in two at the scene. The longer piece of wood had darkened staining which appeared to be blood.
Sentencing was set for May 25th.