A 26-YEAR-old man who stabbed his father in the neck has been found not guilty of manslaughter.
The jury in the trial of Damien O’Grady, from Lenihan Avenue, Prospect, Limerick, returned the unanimous verdict after just under an hour of deliberations at Limerick Circuit Court yesterday.
During the five-day trial they heard how 45-year-old Stephen O’Grady, a retired Army corporal, was stabbed six times during a row at the family home on November 29th, 2007.
Damien O’Grady denied unlawfully killing his father, and his defence team argued that he had acted in self-defence. In his address to the jury yesterday, Judge Carroll Moran said it was not disputed that Mr O’Grady had stabbed his father in the neck and thigh during a fight started by the deceased. Judge Moran said the jury must decide, however, whether the degree of force used was unreasonably excessive.
Evidence was heard that Mr O’Grady snr was violent with alcohol taken, and that on the night of his death he punched his son on the nose after arriving home drunk.
Defence counsel Anthony Sammon said his client believed his father was going to hit him with a heavy bronze statue, and argued that the 26-year-old would be “six feet under” if his father had succeeded.
Counsel for the prosecution, John O’Sullivan, said Damien O’Grady had carried out a “frenzied attack on his late father” and said it was clear from the objective medical evidence that the deceased had been subjected to a severe stabbing.
In one of his interviews with gardaí following his arrest, Mr O’Grady said he loved his father but described him as “unbearable with drink”. He admitted sticking a knife into his father’s neck after he began taunting him with racist remarks saying “black this and black that and you’re not my son anyway”.
The 26-year-old told gardaí he regarded Stephen O’Grady as his father, and said the deceased had referred to him as his son.
Previously the court heard evidence from Damien O’Grady’s younger brother John-Ross, who said he had to leave the family home and move to Waterford after his father assaulted him with a chest expander.
The incident happened in the family home when Mr O’Grady snr overheard his son ringing the gardaí and informing them that his father was beating his mother.
In her evidence to the trial, Damien O’Grady’s mother Regina said her son had done everything to avoid fighting with his father on the night of the fatal assault.
She described how her late husband boxed her son in the face and kept on hitting him after they returned home from the pub. She said under cross-examination that her husband of 27 years could resort to violence when drunk, but that “without drink he was the best in the world”.
Judge Moran offered his condolences to the O’Grady family, adding a “man has died”.
The family, who displayed a united front as they left the courtroom, did not wish to comment on the verdict, and Regina O’Grady left the building embracing her son Damien.