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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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