A second psychologist has claimed that Mr Philip Quigley (24), accused of the contract killing of a Newry civil servant, Mrs Rose Moran (32), is mentally handicapped.
Dr Olive Tunstal told the Co Louth man's Belfast trial yesterday that he was "abnormally introverted, abnormally compliant".
Dr Tunstal, a psychologist specialising in adult mental health, said that because of his poor intellect and social functioning, Mr Quigley would be easily led and easily persuaded. Mr Quigley, from St Nicholas Avenue, Dundalk, denies murdering Mrs Moran, who was stabbed 37 times during a frenzied knife attack at her isolated Border home in August 1991.
Although he has admitted stabbing her, he claims the actual murder was carried out by a second Dundalk man, Mr Danny Larkin, who told him a year later that Mrs Moran's husband, Joe, had set up the killing.