COURT REPORT:EAMONN LILLIS has been found not guilty of murdering his wife, Celine Cawley, but guilty of her manslaughter.
The jury of six women and six men said the State had failed to prove intent. They took 9½ hours over 2½ days to reach their verdict following the 14-day trial at the Central Criminal Court. Lillis will be sentenced on Thursday.
The 52-year-old TV advertisement producer, originally from Terenure in Dublin, had pleaded not guilty to the murder of his wife on December 15th, 2008, at their home on Windgate Road, Howth.
The 46-year-old businesswoman died in hospital at 10.56am that Monday of blunt force trauma to the head.
During the trial, the Deputy State Pathologist said moderate force would have caused the three wounds to Ms Cawley’s head, which resulted in blood loss and asphyxia; her obesity and enlarged heart were contributory factors. He said she might not have died if medical help had been summoned more quickly.
Lillis, who was having an affair with his masseuse, Jean Treacy, said he found an intruder attacking his wife on their patio. It was not until the first day of his trial that he admitted there was no intruder.
Lillis told gardaí that when he came home from bringing his daughter to school and buying the paper, an intruder was attacking his wife on the patio. The assailant knocked him out and escaped.
However, in the witness box he said his wife was wearing rubber gloves and cleaning out the fridge when he arrived home. She asked him to put on the kettle and make some tea. He said he would do it after he cleaned up dog droppings on the patio, and put on a pair of outdoor gloves.
He said she called out after him, asking if he had fed the robin; he had forgotten. A row ensued, in which she called him a bad father and terrible husband, and he accused her of being interested only in her Superwoman image.
He said she must have slipped when she followed him out as, out of the corner of his eye, he saw her get up. She was picking up a brick and rubbing her head, so he presumed she must have banged it.
This was his explanation for one of the three lacerations to her head.
He said she thrust the brick at him and he jabbed her in the shoulders. She took a swipe at him with the brick and it caught him on the side of his face, angering him. He said he tried to grab the brick but his glove fell off and his fingernail was torn. Her face might have been grazed here, he suggested.
He pinned her up against a window, and she “let an almighty scream”. She possibly banged her head off the window ledge, perhaps resulting in another laceration, he said.
He said they both slipped and fell, with her landing on her back, and that this might be where she suffered the second or third laceration. His other glove came off as he tried to get up and she bit his little finger so hard that he thought she was going to bite it off, twisting her head from side to side.
“I hit her on her forehead to stop her moving,” he said. “I screamed at her. It was extremely painful.”
He said he pushed her forehead with the heel of his other hand to force her to release his finger. She might have suffered the third laceration here, he suggested. It was around this time that she scraped him, he said. She finally let go and he threw away the brick, which was beside her head.
He told the court that the row stopped, he noticed a cut to his wife’s head and rested it on his lap. This was his explanation for the large amount of her blood found on his jeans and jumper.
He said his wife threw off her rubber gloves. He asked her how they’d explain their scrapes to their daughter, suggesting they tell her they’d disturbed a burglar. His wife was sitting up and agreed with his plan, before telling him to go away.
He said he felt they needed space, put both pairs of gloves into a bin bag, along with kitchen towel he gave his wife for her cut. He then went into the living room to stage a robbery, taking some camera gear and the bin bag upstairs to his room. He changed out of his bloodstained clothes and washed his hands. He put the bloodied clothes in the bin bag and hid it in a case in the attic along with the camera gear. He said he went back downstairs and saw his wife lying on the patio, unconscious. He couldn’t revive her and dialled 999. It was 10.04am.
The 999 call was played to the jury, who heard Lillis say an intruder had attacked his wife and himself. The operator was heard giving instructions in CPR, which Lillis said he followed.
When gardaí arrived later he continued with his intruder story, thinking that his wife would be fine and tell the same lie, he said.
He made a similar statement at Howth Garda station after his wife died, and even gave the name of a real person, whom gardaí investigated. He rang the following day to add more detail.
He handed over the clothes he was wearing, pretending that these were the clothes he wore when he found his wife. Three days later, gardaí found the case of bloodied clothes in his attic. At one stage he said there must have been a second intruder who was “stashing” things in the attic.
Gardaí put it to him that he had lost his head and killed his wife. He denied this and blamed the phantom burglar.
A few weeks after his wife died, he admitted to his daughter that they’d had a fight. The 17-year-old gave evidence of her memory of that conversation. She said she forgave her father for the row but not for the lies he told afterwards.
“I was brought up never to lie,” she said through video link.
Although Ms Treacy cut contact with Lillis after Ms Cawley’s death, they met three times in the spring and he also told her he had a fight with his wife. She testified about what he told her as well as about their eight-week affair.
She said Lillis received a call from his wife one day while they were out in his Mercedes jeep. Ms Cawley wanted him to return home with the jeep immediately, she said.
Ms Treacy said that Ms Cawley spoke “very badly” to her husband, but that he didn’t react and spoke back normally.
She said he told her that the fight was about him forgetting to take out the rubbish and that Ms Cawley “went mad”. He told her he saw his wife fall on the decking and “bounce back up like a beach ball”, that she hurled abuse at him and they said disgusting things to each other.
She said he gently pushed her forehead to stop her biting him and that all of a sudden a pool of blood appeared under her head, where he noticed a brick. He told her she slipped in and out of consciousness a couple of times.
Ms Treacy said she urged him to tell the truth, but he said his solicitor had told him to say nothing.
The jury announced its verdict to a packed but silent courtroom at about 6.30pm.
Mr Justice Barry White began the day by saying the jury could return a majority verdict of not less than 10 to two. He later said this would also apply to any of four reasons for reaching a manslaughter verdict.
Firstly, he reminded them, there was lack of intent, he said.
“A person is presumed to have intended the natural and probable consequences of his or her actions,” he said. However, that presumption was not absolute and could be rebutted. He said it was up to the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it hadn’t been rebutted.
Secondly, there was provocation, for which they would have to use a subjective test and put themselves in the defendant’s shoes.
“Provocation presupposes the mind isn’t working, the person isn’t rationalising,” he explained.
Thirdly, manslaughter could arise where the accused was acting in self-defence but used more force than they considered necessary.
Finally, he said, there was gross negligence.
“If a person dies as a result of contact between two people, and the defendant appreciates that there’s a risk of death and still fails to go to his or her assistance,” he said.
“It’s not that Mr Lillis contends that he might be guilty of manslaughter,” he said. “The defence contends Eamonn Lillis should be acquitted entirely because the deceased, it says, met her death accidentally.”
However, if a manslaughter verdict could be considered, he said, the judge had to say that.
“The prosecution contends this is murder,” he reminded the jury. “It says it’s proved an unlawful killing and intent to kill.”
Mr Justice White thanked the jurors for their service and excused them from jury service for life.
“It’s clear you’ve paid great attention to the case. I’ve no doubt there were additional pressures on you,” he said, citing the large amount of public attention the trial had attracted.
After the verdict was read out, Brendan Grehan, defending, asked Mr Justice White for a week to allow his client to put his affairs in order. The judge remanded Lillis on continuing bail.
“I will remand the accused, and convict as he now is, until next Thursday morning,” he said, instructing him to sign on with gardaí twice daily, from 9am to noon and from 6pm to 9pm. His passport had already been surrendered.
He said that knowing the reason for the jury’s decision would be of assistance in sentencing.