MR Brendan O'Donnell is a deeply disturbed person who remains "most dangerous", not just to himself but to others, and will require care for most of his life, a psychologist told the Central Criminal Court yesterday.
Dr Graham Turrall said he did not think Mr O'Donnell would ever be productive, hold down a job successfully or sustain a meaningful relationship. It was his view that Mr O'Donnell was suffering from a major mental illness combined with a personality disorder. He said the two conditions can co exist.
He believed Mr O'Donnell was experiencing a chronic thought disorder consistent with someone who has a major mental illness. The mental illness in Mr O'Donnell's case was disorganised schizophrenia, he said. In his view the schizophrenia was episodic and was likely to continue for the Test of his life.
Mr O'Donnell was also experiencing a severe personality disorder, Dr Turrall said. There were several different traits including avoidance, paranoia and an anti social element where the person would do things impulsively to satisfy their needs regardless of the consequences of their behaviour.
Mr O'Donnell had also exhibited a trait where he was very isolated from himself and others. There was also a borderline trait involving a person who is impulsive and has difficulties with their identity.
Dr Turral was continuing his evidence on the 40th day of the trial of Mr O'Donnell (21), a native of Co Clare, on 12 charges relating to events in the west of Ireland in 1994.
Mr O'Donnell has denied the murder of Imelda Riney (29) and her son Liam (3) between April 28th and May 8th, 1994. He also denied the murder of Joseph Walsh (37), the former curate of Eyrecourt, Co Galway, between May 3rd and 8th 1994 and the false imprisonment of Father Walsh.
He has pleaded not guilty to kidnapping Ms Fiona Sampson and Mr Edward Cleary on May 7th, 1994 and to hijacking vehicles driven by both persons. He has also denied having a shotgun and ammunition with intent to endanger life and for unlawful purposes on the same date.
In court yesterday, Dr Turrall told Mr Tom O'Connell, defending, that his diagnosis of Mr O'Donnell's condition was based on a mixture of elements including psychological tests he had carried out on Mr O'Donnell, and the defendant's mental history derived from interviews with members of his family and medical and other notes from the various institutions and prisons where he had been since the age of four.
It was his view, at the time of the killings of Imelda and Liam Riney and Father Walsh, that Mr O'Donnell did not know the nature of his actions and did not know they were wrong. He believed that if Mr O'Donnell knew what he was doing he could not have stopped himself because of his mental illness.
Cross examined by Mr Peter Charleton SC, prosecuting, the witness denied he had been "taken in" by Mr O'Donnell. It was his view that Mr O'Donnell was intellectually deficient and that remained his view after hearing Mr O'Donnell's evidence to the court.
The witness agreed there was "no question" but that Mr O'Donnell had told lies during his evidence. In his view that did not suggest any great degree of intelligence. He said Mr O'Donnell appeared to be trying to control a situation with which he was uncomfortable. He was trying to survive so he had lied.
He believed the lies Mr O'Donnell told were not part of an attempt to be found insane but an impulsive reaction aimed at maintaining his position.
He agreed that some of the things Mr O'Donnell had told the court could be self serving, deliberate deceit but in his opinion it was not. Persons in a psychotic state could still demonstrate purposeful behaviour, he said.
Dr Joseph Fernandez, a consultant psychiatrist, said he examined Mr O'Donnell at Mountjoy Prison on November 6th, 1994, when Mr O'Donnell was on the 22nd day of a hunger strike. He said Mr O'Donnell was expressionless and heavy lidded, with encrusted lips and a coated tongue. His hands and feet were blue and he was weak and staggering.
He spoke of feelings of hopelessness and suicidal feelings. He wanted to kill himself. He appeared to have difficulties in thinking and his mood was retarded, flat and depressed.
Mr O'Donnell had asked the doctors to get him a gun so he could kill himself, the witness said. Dr Fernandez said he felt Mr O'Donnell would have shot himself if he was given a gun. He had said he would continue his hunger strike.
Dr Fernandez said he felt Mr O'Donnell was suffering from a disorder of the mind made worse by the stress of the events before and up to his arrest in 1994.
Asked for his view on Mr O'Donnell's state of mind in April and May, 1994, Dr Fernandez said if Mr O'Donnell was the way he was when he saw him in November, 1994 he could not have known the nature and quality of his actions and could not have known they were wrong.
He said he could not give a view as to whether Mr O'Donnell could have stopped himself from doing what he did in April and May, 1994 if he knew the nature of his acts and knew they were wrong.
He said behaviour could be purposeful and then highly irrational in the context of a continuing psychosis.
Dr Frances Knott, a consultant psychiatrist, said she had interviewed Mr O'Donnell on two occasions last January and had also met him a number of times during the trial and observed him in the witness box.
She had bread all the medical and other notes concerning Mr O'Donnell before interviewing him. She noted he smoked extensively and said the way he "gulped" cigarettes was very characteristic of schizophrenics.
Dr Knott said Mr O'Donnell had spoken to her of hearing voices and had also told of his relationship with his mother and father. It was her view he came from a very disturbed family and that his father's relationship with him was very destructive.
She believed that as a child he had a conduct disorder which developed more floridly after his mother's death. He had developed an obsession for guns. She believed there was an underlying psychological process going on under his conduct disorder, and she would feel that Mr O'Donnell as a child was developing a schizophrenic illness of the disorganised type.
The trial resumes on Tuesday.