A MAN has been sentenced to life in prison at the Central Criminal Court for the manslaughter of his Mountjoy Prison cellmate.
Stephen Egan (25), Belcamp Crescent, Coolock, Dublin killed 20-year-old Gary Douche, also from the Coolock area, on August 1st, 2006.
Egan had been transferred to the over-crowded prison without the anti-psychotic medicine prescribed to him in the Central Mental Hospital.
Egan stamped on Douche’s head, punched and kicked his head repeatedly and then rubbed excrement on his face.
He carried out the attack in a basement holding cell containing three mattresses, which the two men were sharing with five other inmates.
A jury found Egan not guilty of his murder, but guilty of his manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility after a two-day trial in April.
Diminished responsibility is a partial defence provided for under the Mental Health Act 2006 and both sides had urged the jury to reach such a verdict in light of Egan’s diagnosed mental illness, schizo-affective disorder.
The circumstances in which both men came to be sharing the holding cell are the subject of an impending inquiry headed by barrister Grainne McMorrow.
Mr Justice George Birmingham yesterday said that the sentence best calculated to protect the public was one of life imprisonment.
The judge backdated the life sentence to the day of Douche’s death, August 1st, 2006.