The Court of Appeal has dismissed Michael McDonald’s appeal against his convictions for murdering Breda Cummins and assault causing harm to John Lawlor. It was not persuaded that the trial was unsatisfactory or that the murder verdict was unsafe.
The judgment, delivered on 28 November 2019, concerned a trial in the Central Criminal Court. McDonald had pleaded guilty to manslaughter at the start of that trial, but the jury found him guilty of murder. The central issue was whether his responsibility was substantially diminished by a mental disorder, which would have reduced the murder charge to manslaughter.
At trial, the defence relied on evidence that McDonald had a schizoaffective disorder. The prosecution’s psychiatrist, Dr Stephen Monks, diagnosed Alcohol Dependence Syndrome but said McDonald was not suffering from a mental disorder at the time of the offence. Dr Alan Byrne considered that McDonald had a significant mental illness, which he described as somewhere between bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, and said it had affected his capacity to make judgments.
In her directions to the jury, the trial judge said Alcohol Dependence Syndrome was not a mental disorder under the Criminal Law (Insanity) Act 2006 on the facts of the case, because intoxication was excluded. She distinguished that issue from the defence evidence about schizoaffective disorder. The jury rejected diminished responsibility and returned a murder verdict.
On appeal, a new legal team argued that Alcohol Dependence Syndrome itself could qualify as a “disease of the mind” under the 2006 Act, distinct from intoxication. The Court of Appeal noted that this interpretation had not been advanced at trial. It rejected the appellant’s reliance on a previous case involving a fundamental error in jury directions, saying there had been no comparable error here and that McDonald had been able to raise diminished responsibility on the basis actually presented at trial.
The court also considered the trial evidence. It said Dr Byrne’s opinion was that schizoaffective disorder, rather than Alcohol Dependence Syndrome, substantially diminished McDonald’s responsibility. The court concluded that the appeal was not the proper occasion to pursue the new legal argument. It held that the trial judge’s rulings and jury directions were correct for the case tried, and dismissed the appeal against conviction.