A 44-YEAR-OLD man was yesterday found guilty of the manslaughter of a 28-year-old woman in Dublin in 2008, when the two were homeless and addicted to drugs.
Clive Butcher, originally from Britain, gave no reaction when the jury returned its majority verdict of not guilty of murder but guilty of the manslaughter of Rebecca Hoban, following nearly 4½ hours of deliberations in the Central Criminal Court.
Butcher, with an address on Ranelagh Road in Dublin, had denied murdering Ms Hoban but had admitted killing her, on December 17th, 2008.
The State refused to accept his guilty to manslaughter plea, however, and went ahead with the murder trial. During the five days of evidence, the court heard that Butcher had been in a relationship with Ms Hoban for about a year before he killed her. The two met while sleeping rough in the Phoenix Park.
In December 2008, on her release from prison, Ms Hoban had been staying with Butcher at his temporary accommodation in Ranelagh. They spent December 17th together, trying to buy drugs in Dublin city centre, before returning to the bedsit at about 5pm, where they smoked heroin.
During the day, Ms Hoban had texted the accused saying “I love you Mr C Butcher.”
Just before 7pm, Butcher rang 999 and asked for an ambulance to be sent quickly, saying Ms Hoban was “dying rapidly on the floor”.
He described himself to the operator as an “evil f***er” who had just stabbed a woman three or four times.
Ms Hoban had been stabbed six times in the back. Her knife wounds, one of which was 19cm deep, caused her lungs to collapse and she inhaled an extensive amount of blood.
While receiving instructions over the phone on how to administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation, Butcher muttered, “I have to save your f***ing life I suppose, haven’t I?” In his interviews with gardaí, he described a “violent struggle” after a row had broken out over money for drugs.
He said Ms Hoban snatched up a bread knife and came towards him threatening to cut off his testicles, and that she was acting like she was “possessed”. Butcher said he grabbed her hand, twisted her arm behind her back and pressed her up against the wall, and that’s when the knife must have “went in”. He didn’t realise she’d been stabbed, he said, until he saw blood and she slid to the floor.
“I’m sorry it happened. I loved the girl,” he told gardaí.
But in his evidence to the court, Det Sgt James Byrne said Butcher had made an impromptu murder confession to him, a confession that was not recorded on video-tape and that was made with no other gardaí present. He said the accused told him he “did her” because he believed Ms Hoban was going to kill him along with another man, hide his body and take his money.
Mr Justice George Birmingham urged the jury to think “long and hard” about this piece of evidence. He reminded them of the Dean Lyons case, saying that, at least once in our history, a drug addict had been unreliable when it came to confessing to murder.
After deliberations spread over two days, the jury returned its majority 10-2 verdict of not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter. Butcher is to be sentenced on April 26th.