Father found not guilty of infant son's murder by reason of insanity

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

A father was found not guilty by reason of insanity of murdering his 20-month-old son at a Central Criminal Court retrial on 13 December 2019. He had pleaded not guilty to the murder charge. The proceedings were reported on 13 December 2019.

The child died in Clane, County Kildare, on 17 April 2001. At the outset of the retrial, defence counsel Barry White SC admitted on his client's behalf that the father had caused the fatal injuries and had called 999 requesting an ambulance.

At the original trial in 2003, a jury rejected the father's insanity defence and convicted him of murder by a majority verdict. He spent 16 years in jail before the Court of Appeal quashed the conviction in 2019 and ordered a retrial, having heard that he had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 2013.

Four consultant psychiatrists gave evidence at the retrial that the father was suffering from schizophrenia in 2001 and met the requirements for the special verdict. Dr Damian Mohan, called by the prosecution, had testified at the 2003 trial that the father did not have paranoid schizophrenia. At the retrial, he agreed that the condition dated back to November 1999 and said he had since had the benefit of information from three admissions to the Central Mental Hospital.

The jury returned a unanimous verdict after 17 minutes of deliberation. Mr Justice Alexander Owens ordered the father's committal to the Central Mental Hospital for the time being and directed that a psychiatric assessment be prepared. The report said he would return to court the following Friday.

This case may have concluded differently. The outcome has not yet been confirmed by a public source we could find.