The Court of Criminal Appeal has refused John Reilly leave to appeal his manslaughter conviction over the death of 18-month-old Oisín Reilly, holding that the trial judge correctly directed the jury on automatism and voluntary intoxication.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice McCracken on 21 May 2004, addressed whether automatism could provide a defence where the condition was brought about by the applicant’s excessive drinking. The court said intoxication itself was not a defence to manslaughter. It accepted that automatism may provide a defence in some circumstances, but concluded that the law did not allow that defence where the condition resulted from alcohol voluntarily consumed.
Oisín died at his family’s home in the early hours of 5 June 2000. Reilly had been staying there and had spent the night drinking with relatives. The court’s account said the child had been placed on an armchair beside Reilly, who was sleeping on a sofa, after furniture in the sitting room was rearranged. When the child’s mother came downstairs at about 8.30am, she found him dead with multiple stab wounds to the back of his neck. A knife Reilly carried was on the floor beside him. Reilly was deeply asleep and had no memory of what had happened, according to the judgment.
At his trial, Reilly was found not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter by a jury on 16 May 2002. He appealed, arguing that evidence about a sleep disorder and “confusional arousal” could support a finding that his actions occurred in a state of automatism. The defence accepted that the deep sleep followed heavy drinking, but argued that the sleep state, rather than intoxication itself, caused the automatism and that the jury should have been allowed to consider it as a defence.
The defence called a sleep expert, a psychiatrist, a neurologist and an expert on alcohol. Their evidence included that Reilly may have been severely incapacitated in controlling his actions and that the combination of alcohol and emerging from deep sleep could produce confusion. The trial judge told the jury that a person acting without control in a “free standing” condition could be acquitted, but that voluntary intoxication did not excuse manslaughter.
The appeal court considered authorities from England, Canada and Australia. It preferred the approach in the English decision in *DPP v Majewski*, which treats voluntary intoxication as no defence to crimes of basic intent, over the approaches taken in Australia and in a later Canadian case. It said any change to the established distinction between specific and basic intent was for the legislature.
The court ruled that the trial judge’s direction was correct and refused leave to appeal. It did not overturn or vary the manslaughter conviction.