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A jury of the Central Criminal Court has found an electrician guilty of murdering his partner for four months, whom he strangled in his bedroom after a drunken “drunken” session.
The panel of six men and six women rejected the defense’s argument by a majority verdict that Sean Nolan (36) was too drunk to have formed the intention to murder his girlfriend Amanda Caroll (33) and what had happened to him. the mother of two was an “accidental death”.
Defense attorney Michael O’Higgins SC along with Garrett McCormack BL requested a verdict of involuntary manslaughter due to alcohol intoxication. Murder is a crime of specific intent and willful intoxication can have the effect of reducing the crime of murder to involuntary manslaughter. In his role before the jury, Judge Michael MacGrath said that if they had any questions about whether the defendant was drunk that night, they should resolve it in favor of the defendant.
Instead, the jury accepted the State’s case that there could be no doubt that Nolan intended to kill or cause serious injury when he put his hand around Ms. Carroll’s neck for 20 seconds. In his closing speech, prosecutor Shane Costelloe SC with Caroline Cummings BL argued that the intention to get drunk was still an intention and one can decide in a split second to kill or seriously injure someone when drinking alcohol.
Evidence was provided that the couple had a “drunken session” that began early in the day and continued at different locations in Dublin into the evening. The defendant and Ms. Carroll were involved in a traffic collision a few hours before the 33-year-old died and both fled the scene before being intercepted. Nolan’s blood samples were drawn because there was a concern that she was driving under the influence or using drugs and Ms. Carroll was arrested for a public order crime and had to be handcuffed behind her back afterward from hitting gardai. However, after being detained at Mountjoy Garda station for a couple of hours, the couple’s drinking session continued into the evening.
When the couple returned to Ms. Carroll’s apartment that night, Nolan put one hand on the mother-of-two’s neck and the other on her mouth after she called him by the name of her ex-boyfriend, saying she never loved him and tried to hit him. “He was angry. I just wanted him to go to sleep and stop,” the defendant told Gardai. Nolan explained to detectives that he knew his girlfriend was dead when he woke up in her bed the next morning and that he had “panicked” before running out of the apartment.
Ms Carroll’s body was discovered in the bedroom of her apartment the following afternoon by her son Denis Carroll, then 16 years old, who had left the house early in the morning to play football without knowing that his mother was there. dead. Denis Carroll said at trial that he could see his mother was not breathing and said: “I could see that her cheek was swollen and she was cold. I knew I would never see her again.”
The trial heard that Gardai found Nolan on a street in North Dublin after they identified Ms Carroll’s body, and the defendant told them that the couple had argued and he thought he had “strangled her until she passed out” before falling asleep. The defendant said he was “scared” and walked all day. When he was arrested on Navan Road and put on a police car, Nolan said “I probably killed her” when informed of Ms. Carroll’s death. The defendant also made a gesture towards her, arresting the officer how he had put his hand on his partner’s neck and over his mouth “to make him shut up.”
Nolan, residing at Ashington Crescent, Navan Road in Dublin, pleaded not (NOT) guilty of murder, but was guilty of the murder of Ms Carroll at Homestead Court, Quarry Road, Cabra, Dublin 7 on October 21, 2018 .
Assistant State Pathologist Dr. Margaret Bolster testified that Ms. Carroll died from compression of the neck and mouth, which was complicated by ingestion of sedative-type medications. Ethanol, diazepine, sleeping pills, alcohol, antidepressants and cocaine were detected in the body of the deceased. Dr. Bolster pointed out that the mother’s death could not have occurred without suffocation, but the drugs used had an additional effect.
In the defense case, Ms. Carroll died from a combination of asphyxia aggravated by a weakened respiratory system, which was compromised by ingesting a large amount of alcohol and prescription drugs. Under no circumstances did the defendant intend to kill his girlfriend, as his conduct earlier that night pointed emphatically in another direction, O’Higgins said.
All 12 jurors found Nolan guilty of murder by a 10-2 majority verdict. They had deliberated for eight hours and eight minutes for five days.
Following today’s verdict, Judge MacGrath thanked the jury for their attention to the case. He exempted them from jury duty for ten years.
Nolan didn’t react when the verdict was delivered.
Members of Ms. Carroll’s family said “yes” out loud when the court clerk announced the verdict.
Judge MacGrath will issue the mandatory sentence of life in prison on November 4 and will send Nolan to pretrial detention until that date. The judge directed the preparation of a victim impact report by Ms. Carroll’s family.
Online editors
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