An amateur kickboxer who said he “lost all control” and stomped on his 62-year-old mother’s skull after she threatened to kill him has been found not guilty of her murder but guilty of manslaughter by a Central Criminal Court jury. .
The jury of seven men and five women took just three hours and 36 minutes to accept the defence of provocation put forward by Luke Donnelly (29), who told the panel of being “groomed” into a life of drugs and violence by his allegedly abusive mother.
“In my whole life of being attacked and abused I had never defended myself, just waited for it to be over,” Donnelly told the court last week.
Donnelly, of no fixed abode, had pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to the manslaughter of his mother Catherine Henry (62) at her apartment on Bridge Street in Dundalk, Co Louth, on a date unknown in May 2023.
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The trial jury had heard that Donnelly accepted he caused multiple fractures to his mother’s skull and that he left a bloodstained footprint on her back.
During the trial, a pathologist testified that she had died from severe blunt-force trauma to the head and had suffered multiple fractures to her skull, including one which may have been caused by “a stomping or kicking type of impact”.
In seeking a verdict of manslaughter for his client, barrister Conall MacCarthy had argued that the defendant and his mother had a “complex, sad and disturbing” relationship, and there was evidence of the deceased being prone to “sudden outbursts of violence”.
The trial heard that Donnelly had been behaving in “an erratic way” in the months before the killing, including by repeatedly asserting that he was Jesus Christ.
In his evidence, Donnelly, who agreed he had “loaded up” on a cocktail of drugs in the hours before the killing, recalled his mother coming into the bedroom of her apartment on May 23rd, 2023, and asking for his key back.
Donnelly said he told her he was the son of God and could not take the controlling abuse any more. The defendant said his mother screamed in his face that she would kill him if he left.
The defendant said he closed his eyes and “waited for it to be over” as his mother lunged at him. “I didn’t know whether it was punches or a weapon but I could feel my head and arms being hit.”
At that moment, Donnelly said he was in fear for his life, snapped and threw a punch, which connected with his mother and spun her around. “I lost all control and proceeded to stomp, it all happened in a moment,” he said, adding that he believed his mother was going to kill him.
The 12 jurors on Thursday rejected the State’s contention by a majority verdict that the defences of provocation and self defence were not open to Donnelly.
It was the prosecution case that Donnelly had crushed his mother’s skull “like he would a common insect” and that the 62-year-old grandmother had posed no more threat to her son than that.
In his closing speech, barrister Garret Baker for the Director of Public Prosecutions, said Donnelly had stamped on his mother’s skull and also “upon her character at every available turn” in an attempt to “wriggle off the hook”.
Judge Paul McDermott described the material the jury had to deal with as “very difficult”. He exempted them from jury service for the next five years.
The judge directed a probation report and remanded Donnelly in custody until May 11th for a sentencing hearing.
On that date, the Henry family will have an opportunity to make a statement to the court about the impact Catherine Henry’s death has had on their lives.
