Donegal man found not guilty of murdering grandfather by reason of insanity

A native Irish speaker who used a granite stone and a cement block while bludgeoning his grandfather to death outside his home in the Donegal Gaeltacht has been found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity by the majority verdict of a Central Criminal Court jury.

The panel accepted the evidence of two psychiatrists that 39-year-old Derek Mulligan was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia when he killed his grandfather and fulfilled the criteria for the special verdict.

Lawyers for Mr Mulligan had submitted that a "just and humane society" seeks not to punish those who are unwell, but to treat them with specialist care, while the State told the jury that there was "convergence of psychiatric opinion" in the case.

Evidence had been given that Mr Mulligan, who as a child suffered serious sexual abuse at the hands of school caretaker Michael Ferry, told professionals that the paedophile's release from prison had caused him to "spiral".

The trial heard that Ferry was sentenced to 14 years in prison after he was convicted of sexual offending against several boys, including the defendant.

Mr Mulligan (39), with an address at Carrickcoyle, Derrybeg, Gweedore in Co Donegal had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to the murder of his grandfather Derek Burns (78) at Carrickcoyle on December 19, 2023.

Dr Ronan Mullaney, for the defence, had told the jury that Mr Mulligan was suffering from the mental disorder of paranoid schizophrenia at the time. He said the defendant would have been unable to know the wrongfulness of his actions and was unable to refrain from committing the act.

Dr Stephen Monks, called by the prosecution, told the jury that the accused was suffering from the severe mental disorder paranoid schizophrenia when he killed his grandfather. He said by reason of this mental disorder, the defendant did not know the nature and quality of what he was doing, did not know what he was doing was wrong and was unable to refrain from committing the act.

The jury of seven men and five women spent two hours and 22 minutes deliberating on Friday before bringing in majority verdicts on all five counts of not guilty by reason of insanity.

Earlier, the panel handed a note to the trial judge asking how much cannabis was in the defendant's system at the time of his arrest. They also asked whether these levels had affected his behaviour and whether they could consider verdicts of manslaughter or diminished responsibility.

The trial had heard evidence that Mr Mulligan has a history of substance abuse and at one point was smoking up to €50 worth of cannabis daily.

In reply, Ms Justice Eileen Creedon said the two psychiatrists were aware of cannabis being in Mr Mulligan's system and had taken this into account. The judge told the jurors that in light of the undisputed facts of the case, they did not have to consider any lesser charge than murder so manslaughter was not available to them.

Ms Justice Creedon further told the jurors that they had not received any evidence of diminished responsibility in the case and that all the evidence supported a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity. "As you are aware, your oath or affirmation was to give a true verdict in accordance with the evidence and not to go outside the evidence".  

When another note was handed up by the foreman a few minutes later to say the panel were not in a position to reach a unanimous verdict, the judge said she was in a position to give them the option of returning a majority verdict of 11-1 or 10-2. "Nothing less than 10 will do," she added.

After they had delivered their majority verdicts, Ms Justice Creedon thanked the jury for their consideration of the case, telling them she was conscious of how difficult these cases are. The judge exempted them from jury service for the next five years.

Prosecution counsel Patricia McLaughlin SC said there was a bed available immediately for Mr Mulligan at the Central Mental Hospital (CMH) in Portrane.

Ms Justice Creedon then made an order committing Mr Mulligan to the CMH, with his return before the court scheduled for March 31 next. She also directed the preparation of a psychiatric assessment by an approved medical officer.

Mr Mulligan was also found not guilty by reason of insanity that on December 17, 2023 at Carrickcoyle, he did without lawful excuse damage property, to wit the windscreen of a Nissan Quashqui belonging to Catherine McDermott, intending to damage such property or being reckless as to whether such property would be damaged.

The defendant was further found not guilty by reason of insanity that on the same occasion he did without lawful excuse make threats to Ms McDermott to kill or cause her serious harm, intending her to believe that these threats be carried out.

In addition, Mr Mulligan was found not guilty by reason of insanity to two counts of assaulting Breege McFadden and Derek McFadden at Carrickmacafferty, Derrybeg in Co Donegal on the same date.

The five-day Central Criminal Court trial heard that Mr Mulligan, who is originally from Bunbeg in Co Donegal, had suffered from a litany of mental health difficulties since his teenage years and had experienced a number of traumas in his life.

The deceased Mr Burns was from Scotland and his wife Mary was from Donegal. The couple reared their five children in Edinburgh before moving back to Donegal with their three youngest in the 1980's. Mr Burns had experienced ill health in recent times and became withdrawn but was still living in the family home with his loved ones around him.

Mr Mulligan is a native Irish speaker and his father died in 2003, when the defendant was 16 years of age. His mother Angela had sourced a house for her son near to his grandfather and Mr Mulligan had been residing there for several months.

In the weeks leading up to December 17, 2023 people around Mr Mulligan had noted his mental health deteriorating significantly and that he was behaving erratically.

One of Mr Burns' daughters Kathleen went to visit her father at 3.30pm on December 17 and when she went up the laneway to her father's house, she noticed one of his dogs off the lead, which would have been "very unusual".

Kathleen found her father on the ground unconscious and bloodied. She initially thought he had fallen and had a stroke.

When Mr Burns was brought to Letterkenny Hospital, medical personnel were suspicious and didn't think his injuries were consistent with a fall.

Instead doctors believed Mr Burns' injuries were consistent with an assault. There was extensive damage to the left side of the head, the left ear was "practically gone" and multiple bleeds were found on the brain. He had three broken bones in his back and the marks on his hands were consistent with defensive wounds.

Mr Burns died from his injuries two days later on December 19.

In his interviews, Mr Mulligan told gardai he had gone to his grandfather's on December 17 to be somewhere safe, as he was sitting in his own house when "black spiders" started to appear on the roof. "I was only going up there for a visit like," he said.

Mr Mulligan said he just went up to Mr Burns' to get "a fag" off him but his grandfather was in no mood to talk to him. He called the deceased "a grumpy old bast**d" but went on to say: "I love my grandad, he is all I had left, he is the only one I had left."

He told gardai that he could hear a lot of voices in his head and they were saying "you have to kill him, you have to kill him".

Mr Mulligan told himself that he was not going to hurt an "old man" but that he "just grabbed him" and threw Mr Burns to the ground. He said he had "kinda lost it" and was "battering and battering and battering" his grandfather.

The defendant said he gave Mr Burns a couple of kicks when he was on the ground. He also said he had thrown a rock and brick at him.

The defendant said "I hit him in the f**kin head man". He said "as an old man of course he went down straight away".

Asked how many times he had hit him, Mr Mulligan said ten. The defendant said he was scared of himself when he snapped and that he "always" heard voices.

Mr Mulligan told officers in his second interview that he was walking away when "something said you have to finish him off". He said he then picked up a granite stone, went back to his grandfather and "smacked it" off his head. He said it had taken two hands for him to carry the stone.

Mr Mulligan said he had tried to stab his grandfather with a pitchfork before he got the stone but it wouldn't go through the body and was "bouncing off him", so he threw it away. "I tried putting it through his head but looked like it was just bouncing like he had rubber skin or something".

"I was demented like I was just a possessed man," he said.

Mr Mulligan said he picked up "a cement block to finish it off" and threw the block on his grandfather's head. He said all he could see was blood coming out of Mr Burns' head.

The defendant told gardai he had gone off his medication about three months prior to this and thought by doing this, it would "see his nana proud of him".

Detective Garda Paul Dolan said Mr Mulligan had also been involved in two other incidents with two local families - one before the assault on Mr Burns and one afterwards.

The detective said that on midday on December 17, Catherine McDermott saw Mr Mulligan standing about 300 metres from her home as she was driving to Carrickcoyle with her four-year-old son in the car. Ms McDermott said the defendant jumped onto the bonnet of her car and shouted that he was going to kill her.

In her statement, Breege McFadden said Mr Mulligan was shouting and waving his hands as she approached her house in Carrickmacafferty around 12.30pm on December 17. She said Mr Mulligan came at her and pushed her onto the concrete before her husband wrestled him to the ground.

She said the defendant was speaking in a language that wasn't English or Irish but she could hear him say: "Derek is gone, he's gone, I killed Derek Mulligan."  

The McFaddens contacted gardai and Mr Mulligan was detained under Section 12 of the Mental Health Act. The defendant was examined by a GP, who said he needed to be admitted into a psychiatric hospital in Letterkenny.

When he was released from the psychiatric unit Mr Mulligan was arrested and brought to Milford Garda Station, where he was interviewed on three occasions and admitted carrying out the assault on his grandfather.

Dr Ronan Mullaney said Mr Mulligan's psychiatric history goes back to 2008, when the defendant first came into contact with mental health services. Over the years Mr Mulligan, who has a history of substance abuse, has attended mental health services in Sligo, Cork, Letterkenny and St John of God's in Dublin.

The psychiatrist said Mr Mulligan had also been diagnosed over the years with paranoid schizophrenia, personality disorder and bipolar affective disorder.

Dr Mullaney said the first time schizophrenia was given in Mr Mulligan's discharge summary was in 2013.

The expert said Mr Mulligan was very distressed when a sexual perpetrator who had abused him between the ages of 10 and 16 was released from prison in 2021 after serving a 14-year jail term in prison. He said the defendant had used a lot of drugs and alcohol around this time and at one point was smoking up to €50 worth of cannabis daily.

Dr Mullaney said the defendant was abused by a different adult when he was 16 years old, who gave him prescription drugs around the time of his Leaving Certificate. Mr Mulligan reported it to gardai in 2011 when he was aged 22 but wasn't prepared to go through with the court process because of the harm the first case had caused him, resulting in the second case collapsing.

The witness said Mr Mulligan told him he had stopped taking his prescribed antipsychotic medication and been commanded by auditory hallucinations to attack his grandad.

Dr Stephen Monks said Mr Mulligan told him he had auditory hallucinations for many years from the age of 14 and would hear women's voices mocking him, saying things such as "paedophiles are going to get you" in relation to his past sexual abuse.

Dr Monks said the defendant had a long-standing history of auditory hallucinations from his early teens, with voices identifying other people as paedophiles. He said he had multiple relapsing episodes over two decades, which resulted in many psychiatric admissions including long inpatient stays.

He said while drugs and alcohol worsen psychotic episodes, the schizophrenia diagnosis could not be attributed to such.  

In his closing speech, Michael Bowman SC with Simon Gillespie BL, instriucted by solicitor Mr Rory O’Brien, said what "comes out loud and clear" from the evidence is that Mr Burns was a good, decent, honourable and compassionate man, whose life was taken in circumstances he could never have comprehended or anticipated.

The lawyer said Mr Mulligan viewed his grandfather as his father and it was a relationship of close affection, mutual respect and love.

Quite often in these cases, Mr Bowman said it is those who are held nearest and dearest to those with a mental illness that pay the ultimate price.

Counsel said his client was habitually sexually abused by a person in his educational environment between the ages of 10 and 16. When the perpetrator had served an extensive period of time in custody and was released in 2021, it led to the defendant having another psychotic episode, he continued.

He said Mr Mulligan was also abused again by a different person and went on to shave his head and change his appearance so that those who abused him would not find him.  

Mr Bowman said his client's life had been punctuated by hospital inpatient stays, which began when he was 18 years old. He said Mr Mulligan became preoccupied with pedophiles, rapists and abusers and every time he spoke with professionals, this was something on his mind. "He leaves a breadcrumb of psychiatric treatment everywhere he goes".

The barrister said Mr Mulligan was poor at self-medicating and struggled to cope with "demons" in his mind, such as the delusion that he could identify paedophiles by their smell or by looking at their trousers. "He tried to drown it out through alcohol and drugs. In reality just beneath the surface there is a major mental health illness".

Mr Bowman said the defendant's schizophrenia had taken such a hold on him that even medication struggled to manage it and he had been on 50 per cent above the recommended dose of Olanzapine.

Counsel described the evidence in the case as tragic but said it was undeniably the case that Mr Mulligan had a mental illness at the time and that both doctors agreed the special verdict was applicable.

In her closing address, Ms McLaughlin, along with Fiona Crawford BL, called the case a "very difficult and harrowing" one, telling the jury that the focus of their deliberations was not so much about what happened but why it happened.

Ms McLaughlin said there had been a serious deterioration in Mr Mulligan's mental health in the weeks leading up to the killing. She said there was a consensus between the two psychiatrists that the accused was suffering from a mental disorder at the time he engaged in the conduct.