THE Director of the Central Mental Hospital said yesterday he did not think Mr Brendan O'Donnell had a major mental illness when he saw him a week after the bodies of Imelda and Liam Riney and Father Joseph Walsh were discovered in Co Clare.
Dr Charles Smith said he found it hard as a psychiatrist to say what was going on in Mr O'Donnell's mind at the time of the killings.
He believed Mr O'Donnell was suffering from a personality disorder (PD), not schizophrenia. A Mr O'Donnell's case he believed it was a mixture of a borderline personality disorder and an antisocial personality disorder.
He said people with PD are usually criminally responsible and are held to be so because they do not have the interference that schizophrenics experience.
There was nothing about the O'Donnell case that would cause him as a psychiatrist to indicate a lack of criminal responsibility.
He said psychosis fits with the concept of legal insanity but personality disorder does not come within the ambit.
Dr Smith said he saw Mr O'Donnell on May 14th 1994 a week after the discovery of the bodies of Father Walsh and the Rineys in Cregg Wood. He considered Mr O'Donnell would be self injurious through frustration and aggression, but not mental illness. There was no evidence of schizophrenia.
Dr Smith was giving evidence on the 43rd day of the trial of Mr O'Donnell (21), who has pleaded not guilty to 12 charges. He denies the murder of Imelda Riney (29) and her son, Liam (3), between April 28th and May 8th 1994 the murder of Father Walsh (37), the former curate of Eyrceourt, Co Galway, between May 3rd and 8th, and his false imprisonment.
Mr O'Donnell has pleaded not guilty to kidnapping Ms Fiona Sampson and Mr Edward Cleary on May 7th 1994, and to hijacking vehicles driven by them.
In court yesterday, Dr Smith said he had been a forensic psychiatrist for 26 years. His role was to connect illness and crime where there was a connection and to disconnect it where there was not. He said the present trial hinged on the difference between psychosis and personality disorder. A PD was a mainly behavioural disorder, whereas in psychosis symptoms were predominant and behaviour was secondary.
In his view Mr O'Donnell suffered from a combination of an anti social and borderline PD. Features included strange behaviour, unpredictability overlapping with an anti social personality.
He said he first saw Mr, O'Donnell in June 1988, aged 14. At that time he regarded it as safe to suspect psychosis and for Mr O'Donnell to be treated appropriately.
Mr O'Donnell had talked about powers, which he did not regard as usual symptoms of schizophrenia, such as ability to draw sparks. Dr Smith said Mr O'Donnell was treated and appeared to respond.
He said he was worried that Mr O'Donnell was putting down markers for an anti social PD and a bleak enough future.
He next saw Mr O'Donnell in 1990 when he was admitted to the Central Mental Hospital, Dundrum, from Spike Island, with a mutilated left arm. Self injury was quite common among people with PDs. He remained there for three months.
He next saw Mr O'Donnell after the killings of Imelda and Liam Riney and Father Walsh. He doubted Mr O'Donnell had a major mental illness.
Dr Smith said it was his view that Mr O'Donnell was feigning illness when, for several months in 1994, he called everyone he met Seamus. He thought it was significant this stopped when Mr O'Donnell was returned for trial.
During this period it was possible Mr O'Donnell could have had an organic psychotic episode, Dr Smith said. He had become ill in a way that seemed to the staff at Dundrum to be related to his self imposed starvation and fluid deprivation.
They had sent Mr O'Donnell back to Mountjoy Prison in January 1995 because they did not regard him as a long term prospect for Dundrum. He said that was a mistake as within days Mr O'Donnell had mutilated himself again, which led to his readmission to Dundrum.
Dr Smith said psychotic people who kill are very rare and usually easily detected. He said they are willing to admit what prompted the killings.
Dr Frances Knott, a clinical psychiatrist attached to the Eastern Health Board, also gave evidence yesterday. She said she had absolutely no doubt Mr O'Donnell is suffering from disorganised schizophrenia. It was her view that Mr O'Donnell was in a state of acute psychosis at the time of the killings.
She said she believed Mr O'Donnell was floridly psychotic when he was freed from prison in England in March 1994 and had remained in that state for some time afterwards he could not have stopped himself from killing the three victims by virtue of his mental illness.
The witness said a person who is floridly psychotic can be in touch with reality up to a point. But a person with disorganised or hebephrenic schizophrenia was never well.
The trial continues today.