A Dublin man who was drawn "like a magnet" to kill his father by kicking him and stabbing him has been found guilty of murder but insane at the Central Criminal Court.
John O'Connell (29), Kincora Avenue, Clontarf, Dublin, was yesterday sentenced by Mr Justice O'Higgins to be detained at the Government's pleasure in the Central Mental Hospital in Dublin.
The jury took just under 30 minutes to reach its verdict after a trial of just one day. The court heard that O'Connell was suffering from a severe mental illness, and was legally insane at the time of his father's death.
O'Connell's mother, sister and brother, who were in court with relatives and friends, were visibly upset. O'Connell appeared calm.
Mr John O'Connell snr (71) was found dead in his home in December 1998 after his son turned himself in to Clontarf Garda station.
Mr Hugh Hartnett SC, prosecuting, said O'Connell suffered from paranoid schizophrenia since 1993 and was in St Vincent's local psychiatric unit in Fairview at the time of the incident.
He said on December 10th, 1998, O'Connell absconded from the unit and walked home.
"He beat his father by knocking him to the ground and by striking and kicking him. There were demons in his head telling him to do things," Mr Hartnett said. "He took a knife and stabbed him. He died as a result of the knife wounds and blunt injury wounds imposed by his son. He then walked down to Clontarf Garda station holding the bloody knife and handed himself over."
Garda Tracy Meldrum said O'Connell appeared at Clontarf Garda station at 2.15 p.m. "He looked very agitated and had a knife in his right hand with blood dripping from it. His eyes were staring. He said to me 'I have killed my father, do you think I did the right thing? Does a man die if you stab him through the heart'?"
Det Sgt Paul Scott said O'Connell told him that he had kicked his father in the head "about 25 times" before leaving the house. He was walking down the road when he heard his father calling him so he "went back and put a knife" into him. "I felt he wasn't dead, no, I felt him calling out to me that he wasn't dead," he told the detective.
A report from Dr Marie Cassidy, then Deputy State Pathologist, concluded that Mr O'Connell snr died from blunt force trauma to the head and stab wounds to the chest.
Mr Patrick Gageby SC, defending, told the court that O'Connell was extremely co-operative with gardaí and came from a "very decent and respectable family".
Giving evidence for the defence, psychiatrist Dr Charles Smith, who cared for O'Connell in the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum, said he had "no doubt he was majorly ill at the time".
He said O'Connell suffered from delusions and hallucinations and could not make sense of reality. "On the day in question, his illness was not that obvious but became more obvious as the day wore on," he said.
For the prosecution, psychiatrist Dr Helen O'Neill agreed that O'Connell was "clearly psychotic". "He had been having paranoid ideas about his father, that he was influenced by black magic and he had fearful thoughts around his father."