DAVID MAHON’S BARRISTER has told his trial jury that his client had no motive to kill his stepson, but every reason not to harm him due to his love for Dean Fitzpatrick’s mother.
Sean Guerin SC suggested that the cause of Fitzpatrick’s death was self impalement and that the jury would have to decide not if his stepson’s death was his fault, but if he bore criminal responsibility.
Guerin spent much of yesterday giving his closing speech to the Central Criminal Court on behalf of the Dubliner charged with murdering the brother of missing teenager Amy Fitzpatrick.
The 45-year-old has pleaded not guilty to murdering the father-of-one on 26 May 2013, a day after the deceased interfered with his bicycle to annoy him.
The 23-year-old received a stab wound to the abdomen outside the apartment that his mother, Audrey Fitzpatrick, shared with Mahon at Burnell Square, Northern Cross. The Central Criminal Court has heard that he bled to death internally.
“Terribly tragic consequences”
The court heard that the accused voiced the possibility to gardaí that Fitzpatrick had walked into the knife he was holding on purpose.
Guerin said that if his client had not taken a knife out of his pocket on the landing, his stepson would not have died.
“As he said himself, it was a very, very stupid thing to do. It had terribly tragic consequences,” he said.
David Mahon will have to live with the knowledge of his fault in the death for the rest of his life.
He said, however, that the issue was not whether he was at fault.
“You’re being asked if he bears criminal responsibility for murder,” he said.
“The defence says it was the movement by Dean Fitzpatrick that caused the force required to cause the injury,” he said, reminding the jury of Mahon’s account that his stepson had walked into the knife he was holding.
He referred to the prosecution’s ‘aphorism of suicide by stepfather’ in its closing speech. He said this was something the jury would have to consider.
“It’s not an alternative to accident because we can’t explain the movements of Dean Fitzpatrick,” he said.
Guerin outlined what had been going on in Fitzpatrick’s life in the run up to the incident and the unknown effects that drugs found in his system might have had.
He later described a number of scenarios for the jury.
“Let us not underestimate the obvious explanation that he didn’t see the knife,” he suggested.
Relationship difficulties
He reminded the jury that Fitzpatrick was having relationship difficulties with the mother of his child. She had sent him a message just 15 minutes before his arrival at Mahon’s home that she was with someone else.
“At the same time, his stepfather was on about this plastic water bottle,” he said. “Maybe in that moment, in his own agitation, he’d had enough, didn’t see the knife, moved towards him, maybe to loaf him,” he said.
Maybe there is a darker, more troubling, more tragic possibility, given his significant history of mental illness and previous incidents of self harm.
“Maybe he did see the knife,” he said, suggesting that the light from the fluorescent lamp above might have reflected off the blade.
“Maybe in that flash of light, he saw only darkness, only despair,” he said.
Guerin also suggested the possibility that Fitzpatrick had seen the knife, but had failed to appreciate the danger.
He reminded the jury that he had mentioned to medical personnel that he felt like Superman when he drank. Guerin noted that there was no alcohol in his system, but again questioned the effects of the medications found during the post-mortem.
Misrepresentation
Guerin addressed the State’s argument that he must have known he had caused serious injury because he had hit bone, and that anyone who has ever cut through meat knows when the knife hits bone.
Never has a more preposterous, unscientific case been put to a jury in the absence of evidence.
He also said the State’s description of his client leaving his stepson to die on the street was a misrepresentation, the incident having taken place indoors and his client not having been on the street.
“Who lacks credibility in this case?” he asked. “Is it the prosecution because of the way they misrepresented the evidence at the beginning and sought to mislead the pathologist and then you at the end?”
He said that his client would live with the consequences of what had happened and that the jury would have to live with its verdict.
He said that all the prosecution had was panic and “junk science drawn not from the science books or mortuary slab but from the kitchen table”.
He said that Mahon’s account was of a tragic accident, which occurred without any deliberate act or intention on his part to kill or cause serious injury. He said that none of the scientific evidence contradicted it.
He had no motive to kill and every reason in his relationship with and love for Audrey Fitzpatrick not to harm Dean Fitzpatrick.
“On Mr Mahon’s behalf, I ask you for no half measures,” he said, suggesting that the State’s case had collapsed beneath it.
“Can you say with your hand on your heart that the prosecution has disproved Mr Mahon’s account beyond a reasonable doubt?” he asked. “I suggest you can’t and for that reason the only appropriate verdict is not guilty.”
Justice Margaret Heneghan then told the jury of six women and six men that three possible verdicts would be open to them: guilty, not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter, or not guilty.
She also told them that they could not speculate on why Mahon’s friend, John McCormack, did not give evidence. The trial heard that McCormack was in Mahon’s apartment that night and had walked out onto the landing with the deceased before the incident.
She explained murder and manslaughter and told them that she would summarise the evidence for them tomorrow.
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