A jury must decide if a man who denies murdering the Irish boxing champion Kevin Sheehy was provoked before he repeatedly ran over the athlete in his jeep.
Logan Jackson, 31, of Longford Road, Coventry, England, has denied murder but admitted Sheehy’s manslaughter at Hyde Road in Limerick city on July 1, 2019.
Jackson also denies intentionally or recklessly engaging in conduct that created a substantial risk of death or serious harm to others by driving a Mitsubishi SUV dangerously at high speed towards pedestrians on the same occasion.
The jury of five men and five women were sent out to begin their deliberations yesterday.
Sheehy, a five-time Irish boxing champion, was repeatedly run over by a Mitsubishi Shogun and died from multiple injuries, including a “catastrophic skull fracture”. His body was found lying on the road about 4.40am after he had attended a house party to celebrate the Munster hurling final match.
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Sheehy’s cousin has told the trial that after the party he tried to grab on to the 20-year-old before he was struck and “taken away” by the speeding vehicle.
The court also heard that at around 4.40am Thomas Lysaght tried to pull Sheehy off the ground but the vehicle “spun around” and came back towards them for a second time.
“I had to let Kevin go and move away. He was dragged up the road,” Lysaght told the trial.
The witness described how he then tried to divert the driver’s attention away from his cousin but that the SUV “went over” Sheehy a third time before fleeing the scene.
Beginning her charge to the jury at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin yesterday, Ms Justice Eileen Creedon said the accused was entitled to remain silent and was not obliged to give evidence in his own defence. Furthermore, they were not entitled to speculate on the evidence in the case, she said.
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The judge warned the jury about telling lies and said that the evidence was that Jackson had lied to gardai during his interviews.”The mere fact a defendant tells a lie is not evidence of guilt. The defendant in a criminal case may lie for many reasons. They may lie to protect someone else or lie out of panic and confusion,” she said.
When considering the accused’s intent, Creedon said that the jury must decide if it was Jackson’s purpose to kill or cause serious injury to the deceased.
“If you are satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Mr Jackson killed Mr Sheehy unlawfully and intended to cause him serious harm or death then the offence of murder had been made out,” she said.
If the accused did not have the necessary intent for murder, she said, then they must acquit Jackson of that charge.
It was the defence case that Jackson did unlawfully kill Sheehy and they had raised the partial defence of provocation, which can reduce a charge of murder to manslaughter. It was the defence contention that the murder charge had not been made out, she added.
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To consider this partial defence, the jury must be satisfied that the accused intended to kill the victim or cause him serious injury. When considering if the accused was provoked they must consider the evidence clearly, she said.
For provocation to be relied upon where there must be a sudden — and not a considered or planned — total loss of self-control that the accused was unable to prevent himself from committing the act which led to the death of Sheehy. The loss of control must be such a complete overwhelming of ordinary self-restraint that the accused could not help intending to inflict death or serious injury.
That total loss of self-control in consequence of provocation could not be because of intoxication on drink or drugs, the judge said.
Loss of self-control must be in response to a genuinely serious provocation, not a mere insult, by the victim. The defence, she said, did not apply to “warped notions of honour” nor hurt to male pride.
If the jurors find that the accused was provoked then the charge of murder was reduced to manslaughter and they could return a verdict of not guilty of murder.
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In his closing speech, Dean Kelly SC, for the prosecution, argued that Jackson could have kept driving instead of “flying into a murderous rage” and “thundering” his vehicle “like a Formula 1 driver” into Sheehy. He insisted that the evidence in the case “required and demanded” a verdict of guilty of murder.
Referring to Jackson’s interviews with gardai, Kelly said he had created a “tapestry of lies” and “the flavouring of the truth” had been employed by him in a fundamentally dishonest way.
Kelly said that the “stupid, banal, ordinary” argument between himself and Sheehy lasted 90 seconds at its height and one could see from the CCTV footage how unphysical it was.
Lysaght testified that the accused had his top off, which Sheehy noticed and said: “Look at the muscles on that guy.” When asked by the prosecution if this man was indeed “a fella with big muscles”, Lysaght said he was not.
Michael Bowman SC, for the defence, said that the CCTV footage was “all pictures and no sounds, it tells us something but not everything”.
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The battleground in the case, he said, was what happened before Jackson got into his car that night and what was in his mind. The prosecution case lacked the granular detail of fact and truth, he submitted, adding that the manslaughter plea that had been entered was the only possible verdict to return.
The jury has been told that Jackson is a native of Coventry and has “some family connections” in Limerick.
The trial was also told that Sheehy and Jackson had “an exchange” moments after leaving a house party where they had gone to celebrate Limerick’s Munster hurling final victory over Tipperary in 2019. The court was told that “some exception was taken by something that was said or words spoken”.