A Galway woman whose defence was that she was provoked and "pushed just too far" by her abusive partner was yesterday acquitted of his murder.
Kathleen Bell (36), of Camilaun Park, Newcastle, Co Galway, was found not guilty of murder but guilty of the manslaughter of her brother-in-law, Mr Patrick Sammon (42) at her house in Camilaun Park on June 20th, 1997.
From the outset, she had admitted his manslaughter.
The jury of seven women and five men took just over 1 1/2 hours to reach their unanimous verdict in the Central Criminal Court in Dublin.
Ms Justice Catherine McGuinness remanded Bell on continuing bail until April 21st next for sentencing on the manslaughter charge.
Counsel for the prosecution and defence agreed with the judge that they will explore alternative ways of dealing with the case.
Kathleen Bell admitted she stabbed Mr Sammon with a knife she used to peel potatoes. She took it from the kitchen and hid it under her jumper during an argument with him in the early hours of June 20th, two nights after she learned that her sister Mary had died of a drug and drink overdose in London.
She could not remember the exact number of times she stabbed him, but Dr Malcolm Little, a pathologist at University College Hospital, Galway, told the court that when he carried out a post-mortem examination, he found six stab wounds to the left chest and shoulder and a number of defensive wounds to the hands.
Her defence was that Mr Sammon provoked her, insulting his late wife, her sister, and taunting her about her childhood sexual abuse.
Yesterday, counsel for the State, Mr Marcus Daly SC, told the jury the DPP took the view that a verdict of murder was appropriate in the case. "That was why it was fought over the past seven days", he said, adding that he took the same view himself.
But Mr Patrick MacEntee SC, defending, said that by reaching a not guilty verdict on the murder charge, the jury would not be trivialising the death of Mr Sammon or giving Bell "the easy option".
To ask what they would have done in the circumstances she was in would be wrong, he said. They must ask what she would have done and judge the facts of the case on the circumstances of her life and the kind of person she was because of that.
Mr MacEntee said the defence had gone into great detail about Bell's background not to elicit sympathy but to show that she was "a seriously damaged" person who had had "an awful life".
It was "a real live Kathleen Bell" who was systematically sexually abused as a child and subjected to "terrible debasing stuff" which caused the destruction of her sense of self-worth, he said.
He asked the jury to think of the effect of "her appalling experiences" of deprivation, abuse, and of having a baby taken from her when she became pregnant as a teenager.
"Her life was a living hell," he said. She was so much in turmoil from the abuse she had suffered that she cut herself with blades as a way of releasing it.
Two nights after she heard her sister Mary had died of a drug overdose in a London hospital the previous April, she was not allowed the basic necessity of the peace and quiet to grieve, counsel said.
Instead, Mr Patrick Sammon persistently phoned her and then when she gave in and allowed him to come back to her house, "within 10 minutes of his arrival" he started an argument which led to his abusive remarks about Mary and the taunting about Bell's own childhood sexual abuse.
Mr Sammon was "ruthless" in his behaviour, Mr MacEntee said, and had deliberately targeted his remarks to cause her maximum psychological pain.
Drunk from between eight and 10 cans of beer, and having taken extra doses of two types of tranquillisers to cope with her grief, Bell "must have been at the end of her tether", he said.
Mr Sammon's taunting was the final insult and "she freaked" and stabbed him, losing all control in those moments.
Now she regretted the killing and his death, Mr MacEntee said, "and she loved him".
On the night of June 20th, she was "pushed just too far". Mr Sammon's abusive remarks were "the straw that broke the unfortunate camel's back".
Yesterday, after the jury's verdict was announced, Kathleen Bell's two eldest children by her relationship with Philip Bell smiled for the first time in the Central Criminal Court.
They had been present for the duration of their mother's trial, leaving the courtroom at her request only at times when the evidence of her childhood abuse was being heard.
"It was a curious, sick love, but then Kathleen had not much choice," Mr MacEntee said yesterday, describing Bell's relationship with the man she stabbed to death, Mr Sammon, a plasterer from Newport, Co Mayo.
Her circumstances had "programmed her" to make such choices in her life, her defence counsel said.