A SLIGO man has been found guilty of killing a 14-year-old girl. A jury of six men and six women took nearly 5½ hours over three days to find Ronald McManus not guilty of murder but guilty of the manslaughter of Melissa Mahon. It also found him not guilty of threatening to kill one of his daughters, Samantha Conroy, a key prosecution witness.
McManus (44), Rathbraughan Park, Sligo, also known as Ronnie Dunbar, had denied the murder and the threat to kill during a five-week trial. Mr Justice Barry White will sentence him in July.
Mr Justice White, describing the case as “distasteful, sordid and squalid”, exempted the jurors from further service for life. He thanked them and said he was sure they had found the case difficult to determine.
Brendan Grehan SC, defending, said the issue of involuntary manslaughter may be raised at sentence in circumstances where the jury has found that McManus did not intend to kill Melissa or cause her serious injury.
Mr Justice White responded that the jury’s findings indicated that it was “not satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused intended to kill or cause serious injury”. He asked prosecution counsel to provide assistance from the Director of Public Prosecutions in relation to sentences for manslaughter in circumstances similar to this case, the unlawful killing of a 14-year-old.
Mr Grehan said McManus wanted the court to proceed to sentence yesterday without the benefit of reports. Sentence will be imposed by the Central Criminal Court on July 6th.
The jury had heard that Melissa had gone missing from the care of the Health Service Executive on September 14th, 2006. Her skeletal remains were recovered from the shore of Lough Gill in February 2008 after Samantha Conroy told gardaí that her father had killed the girl and dumped the body.
The trial lasted for 25 days and the jury retired on the 23rd day. It was sent home on Monday following the judge’s charge and 2½ hours of deliberation.
On Tuesday the jury asked to again see video-link evidence given by Samantha Conroy. A portion of her evidence was shown and it was then discovered that a malfunction with the recording equipment meant that another day’s evidence had not been recorded.
The jury was again sent home for the evening on Tuesday after more than an hour of deliberation.
Joseph Barnes, defending, made an application yesterday morning to discharge the jury on the grounds that the Criminal Evidence Act 1992 stated that all video link evidence should be recorded. However, Mr Justice White agreed with the prosecution that the failure to video record a portion of the cross-examination of Samantha Conroy did not amount to failure to provide a fair trial.
He said the evidence had been recorded by the court’s digital audio recording system. The evidence and inquiries into how the video recording failed would be put on the transcript and would therefore be available if needed by the Court of Criminal Appeal.
He added that the jury was entitled to have its memory refreshed from the judge’s note of the evidence or from the transcript, but he was not aware of any authority which suggested that jurors were entitled to view the evidence again.
An audio recording of the evidence was played for the jury, which then resumed deliberations.
Just before 1pm yesterday, the jury indicated that it had not yet reached a verdict upon which all its members were agreed. Mr Justice White sent the jurors to lunch and told them that he would give them the option of returning a majority verdict after lunch.
Just after 2pm, before the judge gave any further instruction, the jury returned a unanimous verdict of guilty of manslaughter.