Verdict in Kenna case down to the opinions of two psychiatrists

On Thursday, Laura Kenna was sentenced by a judge to 10 years in prison for the attempted murder of a woman in Drumcondra, Dublin two years ago. But the decision on her conviction, made by a jury in March, came down to the opinions of two consultant psychiatrists.

Professor Harry Kennedy, for the prosecution, and Dr Stephen Monks, for the defence. University students took notes while two of Ireland's most eminent experts in the field of criminal insanity give conflicting opinions from the witness box.

The question was whether Laura Kenna was legally insane at the time she viciously attacked a civil servant on her way home from work.

Through two separate trials, the first of which resulted in a hung jury, Fionnuala Burke had to listen to evidence of the ordeal she endured on the Drumcondra Road, two years earlier.

Her only company was a team of detectives from Mountjoy Garda station, who did their best to limit the trauma of the trial process for her. She felt ignored by the whole process.

Calculation

In the end, the jury agreed with Prof Kennedy, clinical director of the Central Mental Hospital (CMH), who believed Kenna’s attack on Ms Burke involved calculation and she was not entitled to the special verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity.

The outcome for Kenna is a committal to prison, though it is likely she will require further treatment at the CMH, the State’s only dedicated forensic psychiatric facility.

A few weeks before Kenna attacked Ms Burke, she stabbed anther woman in the face with a pen at a Luas stop. Unusually in a criminal trial, the jury were told about this previous incident, and the fact that another jury had already found her not guilty by reason of insanity.

Dr Monks, who interviewed Kenna twice in 2018, believed neither assault would have occurred in the absence of a mental illness. In his opinion, Kenna was responding to delusions about death, vampires and cannibalism on both occasions.

Professor Kennedy agreed with Dr Monks that Kenna was suffering from schizoaffective disorder, a chronic mental illness related to schizophrenia. He also agreed that Kenna was legally insane at the time of the Luas stop incident. He explained how Kenna had waited very near to the Luas stop after the attack, and didn’t run away. There was also “independent evidence” from the victim of the Luas stop attack, that showed Kenna was responding to hallucinations at the time.

Sense of entitlement

Crucially, however, Prof Kennedy believed the attack on Ms Bourke, three weeks later, was more calculated. He said it involved a “sense of entitlement”.

Prof Kennedy said the attack on Ms Bourke was a robbery because, in Kenna’s own words to gardaí, she needed money for drink and drugs. Prof Kennedy said she had “appropriated a sharp knife” for that purpose and selected an appropriate victim; Kenna had referred to following another woman along the Drumcondra Road, and letting her go, before attacking Ms Bourke because she was “only little”.

She told Ms Bourke “if you give me your bag, I’ll let you go” in a normal tone. Prof Kennedy said there was “nothing delusional” about it. It was “straight forward instrumental negotiation” and there was no evidence Kenna could not stop what she was doing on account of her condition.

He also said Kenna didn’t hang around, like she had done for the Luas stop incident. She took Ms Bourke’s bag and ran away. She used money from the victim’s bag to buy a train ticket to Maynooth and had the ability to argue with an Irish Rail worker at Drumcondra railway station about purchasing the ticket.

“Insofar as she had an ability to cease and desist, she exercised that once she had achieved her primary goals”, which was to steal a handbag at knife point, Prof Kennedy said.

Mad to bad

Counsel for the defence, former High Court judge Barry White, asked Prof Kennedy how Kenna could have gone from being "mad to bad to mad [AGAIN]" in the space of three weeks.

In response, Prof Kennedy said “the natural history” of schizoaffective disorder “varies rapidly from day to day”.

Mr White put it to Prof Kennedy that he had come to court with a “fixed notion” and was carrying a “sword for the prosecution” rather than being objective. In response, Prof Kennedy said “it is important to be impartial”.

“The jury will decide on the facts.”

At another point, Mr White told Prof Kennedy to “wipe that smirk off your face”, which Prof Kennedy denied having.

Dr Monks, who interviewed Kenna twice in 2018, said she had been labouring under delusions about killing people for a long time before the attack on Ms Bourke and was trying to kill “someone for a purpose that wasn’t related to stealing a handbag”.

He said Kenna thought she was going to be “eaten” by vampires and that if she didn’t kill somebody she wouldn’t survive. She stated that she was being talked into killing somebody by the “voices in her head”.

Prof Kennedy said Kenna’s “flippant” and “misleading” answers to gardaí were “defiant” rather than delusional. She may have imagined vampires subsequently but there was no evidence of that at the time. He said she was an “inconsistent historian” who possessed “callous” and “unemotional” personality traits.

The jury sided with Kennedy and convicted Kenna of attempted murder.