After a five-day trial, Mark Nash (25) was yesterday sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a couple in Co Roscommon last year.
Nash, whose last address was Clonliffe Road, Drumcondra, Dublin, but who lived most of his life in Leeds, England, was found guilty of the murder of Mr Carl Doyle (29) and his wife, Ms Catherine Doyle (28), at their home in Caran, Ballintober, Castlerea, Co Roscommon, on August 16th, 1997.
A jury of eight women and four men reached unanimous verdicts after almost three hours' deliberations.
The jury also found Nash guilty of causing grievous bodily harm, with intent, to his then girlfriend, Ms Sarah Jane Doyle, at the house on the same date. Mrs Justice McGuinness sentenced him to eight years' imprisonment for this conviction.
For the defence, Mr Gregory Murphy SC argued that the State had not proved Nash intended to kill or cause serious injury.
In what Mrs Justice McGuinness described as a passionate speech, he told the jury it must administer the law as t it found it, not as it wished it to be. Asking the jury to "be brave", he said his client was not guilty within the law as it stood.
Telling the jurors they were "not the keepers of the morals of this state", he said they were a jury of Nash's peers who must try him according to law.
"OK, he killed them, but he's not guilty of murder or of assault," Mr Murphy said. Though anybody on the street would say his client was "bonkers", he was "not mad, in law".
The wheels of the law work slowly, he said, and Irish courts work on a definition of insanity formulated in 1843. A legal halfway house between murder and manslaughter, that of "diminished responsibility" or "irresistible impulse", was available under UK law but not under Irish law.
An inquiry to the Law Reform Commission in the past week had left him with the same answer the Government has given for 40 years, that it is "considering it".
Citing the quotation, "Let justice be done, though the heavens fall", Mr Murphy told the jury it must give the benefit of the doubt to Nash, who himself said he did not intend his actions.
"If this man is convicted I believe a greater disgrace will occur than would be portrayed by the gutter press if he were to walk from this court," Mr Murphy said.
But in her charge to the jury Mrs Justice McGuinness told them that though many would agree with Mr Murphy's comments on the need for legislative change, "it is not your job to consider this". That was for the legislature or the Supreme Court, she said.
"I think you can to some extent ignore the pleading of Mr Murphy that our law should be changed."
Reminding the jury it was not necessary for the prosecution to establish a motive in order to establish intent, she told them: "It is the intent at the time he committed the act that you must look at."
Nash, wearing a black suit and black top with a religious cross necklace, sat impassively as the verdict was delivered, his head bowed in the same position he has held it in throughout the trial. Mr Doyle was found by gardai on a sofa in the living room of his home at Caran with five knife wounds to his chest. His wife Catherine was stabbed 16 times and found on the dining room floor.
Nash's girlfriend at the time, Ms Doyle (19), dragged herself to a neighbour's house to raise the alarm after she too was attacked by Nash.
He admitted the killings and the assault, but his defence was that he did not intend his actions.
After the jurors retired at 3.30 p.m. yesterday they were recalled at 6 p.m. and asked if they had reached a verdict on which they could all agree.
The jury foreman told Mrs Justice McGuinness they had reached a unanimous verdict on the charge of murdering Ms Catherine Doyle and causing grievous bodily harm to Sarah Jane Doyle and were still considering the first count of the murder of Mr Doyle.
Mrs Justice McGuinness then directed them to reach a majority verdict of at least 10 of them on this count. Twenty minutes after they retired, the jury keeper was informed they had reached a verdict on this count also.
At 6.30 p.m., when the foreman delivered the verdict of guilty of the murder of Mr Carl Doyle, the judge immediately imposed the mandatory life sentences for the two murder counts. After both prosecution and defence agreed that she should proceed to sentencing on the other count, she noted that the maximum sentence for grievous bodily harm was also life imprisonment.
Mrs Justice McGuinness said she did not propose to impose that maximum. Imposing a sentence of eight years, she said she had to take into account the fact that Sarah Jane Doyle had "suffered considerably" and that it was "quite clear that she has by no means recovered from the extremely serious attack upon her".
Ms Doyle suffered two skull fractures, one a depressed fracture, as a result of the injuries she received.
After the sentences were imposed, Nash shook hands with and thanked his defence counsel, while relatives of the deceased expressed relief outside the court.
During the trial, the jury heard from Ms Doyle that she had "no idea" why Nash had attacked her and her sister and brother-in-law at the start of a weekend visit to their home in Co Roscommon.
Nash also told the jury he could not explain his actions, but he said he had "just lost control" after he took a boning knife from Mr Doyle, which he claimed he had been "playfully threatening" him with.