DEFENCE:BRENDAN GREHAN SC, defending, asked the six women and six men of the jury to look coldly and clinically at the evidence and ask themselves if the case outlined by the prosecution stood up to scrutiny.
“The bottom line in the prosecution’s case is that he murdered Celine Cawley because an opportunity presented itself,” he said in his closing speech.
He said that if Mr Lillis was looking for an opportunity to murder his wife, he would have found a much better place than the one part of their property that was exposed to public view. He reminded them that the patio of Rowan Hill could be seen from a right of way running alongside it.
He reminded them of other evidence that described his demeanour as normal earlier that morning. He also said that the injuries to Mr Lillis’s face “did not square” with the idea of this being an opportunistic killing.
He recalled the postmortem examination evidence that the blows to Ms Cawley’s head were from moderate force, which probably would not have killed her if she did not have an enlarged heart and obesity. This was something an ordinary person would not know, he said.
“If you were going to kill someone, you’d do it properly,” he said, suggesting that one would not use moderate blows.
“Eamonn Lillis was having an affair, and perhaps even the strongest marriage that is totally fulfilled could be rocked.” He suggested that the affection of “a beautiful young woman has the capacity to roll back the years in your life”.
He asked who would not be flattered if his hand was put on a pulse he caused to race, referring to Jean Treacy putting Mr Lillis’s hand on her racing pulse.
“I’m not suggesting that it was anything other than a fling, that he was going to go riding off into the sunset,” he said, “but conceivably he might have responded differently to how he might have in a row with his wife otherwise.”
He said that lies alone could never be justification for finding someone guilty, “nor can an affair. This is a court of law, not a court of morality.” His instructions were that his client did not intentionally inflict injuries on his wife, he said, and that in the aftermath, Mr Lillis did not believe she was seriously injured.
Mr Grehan then quoted Det Garda Paul Donoghue who gave evidence of interviewing Mr Lillis about the death.
“You have to face what happened. It’s quite obvious a terrible tragedy happened,” he Det Garda Donoghue had said, suggesting that a row had broken out with Ms Cawley. “You lost your head. It’s within all of us. We can crack up and get very, very angry. I can do it,” he continued.
“From what I’ve heard of you, everyone is saying you’re a very nice guy, a lovely fellow, a gentle, caring person, which leads us to conclude it was some kind of explosion and your head flipped that morning.” Mr Grehan said his client did not have a reputation for being a nasty, violent person.
“All the evidence suggests he’s not someone capable of an opportunistic murder. All the evidence suggests there was a row and injuries resulted from that row,” he continued.
He suggested that the prosecution had put forward no alternative account of how things happened and how the injuries to both spouses occurred. “It’s not made out that they were all inflicted by a brick,” he said, concluding that the jury could not be satisfied that Mr Lillis was guilty of murder.
Mr Justice Barry White will continue his charge to the jury this morning.