A judge has launched a strong attack on the legislature which, he says, has left him powerless to make a hospital order for a young paranoid schizophrenic convicted of strangling his mother.
Damien Donnan (21) was due to be sentenced for the manslaughter of Jennifer Donnan at the family home at De Valera Park, Thomondgate, Limerick, on April 17th, 2000. Yesterday, however, in the Central Criminal Court, a consultant psychiatrist testified that Donnan was a very ill young man who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.
Insanity issues were raised during the trial but, because the facts did not meet the rigid insanity criteria, he was not found guilty but insane - a technical acquittal. Mr Justice Carney said he would not "subvert" his powers by sending Donnan to prison just to "keep this man off the streets".
Instead, he said, he would postpone sentencing until October to "hear evidence of what regime may be provided" in appropriate surroundings. Effectively, Donnan will now be returned to the prison service instead of being committed to a medical institution for treatment necessary to recover his mental health.
In a scathing attack on the legislature's failure to reform the State's insanity laws, Mr Justice Carney said: "I am now in a position that I cannot make a hospital order, which I think is in the power of every judge in the UK and, I suspect, every judge in the civilised world." He said "the legislature of this State has not once" since its foundation enacted laws "to deal with the trial of a person such as this accused".
It was manifest during his trial that the 1843 insanity rules did not apply in this case, he said. This forced the defence into the "totally grotesque" position of having to defend the case on the grounds of provocation.