Teen found guilty of Laois murder

A 16-year-old Laois teenager who hammered a 14-year-old boy to death has been found guilty of murder at the Central Criminal court.

After deliberating for over two and a half hours, the jury of five men and seven women found the youth guilty by a majority of 11-1.

The mother of the victim broke down in tears as the verdict was read out. The accused showed no emotion. Trial Judge Mr Justice Barry White remanded the boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, in custody to St Patrick’s Institution for sentencing on October 12.

Mr Justice White told an emotionally-charged courtroom that a mandatory life sentence was normally handed down for a guilty of murder verdict, but said that "there is an exception when it comes to dealing with juveniles".

"I have the discretion on the issue of sentencing," he told the jury. He said he would have to take the teenager's "tender years" into consideration and added that "at the very least there is a psychological aspect and indeed there might be a psychiatric aspect to this case".

There were emotional scenes outside the courtroom as the victim’s mother thanked investigating Garda officers.

The accused had pleaded not guilty to the murder. He sat impassively with his arms outstretched across the back of the bench for most of the eight-day trial. His parents sat grim-faced behind him as the verdict came through.

The court heard last week that the deceased's body was found on wasteground in a midlands town shortly before midnight on November 11, 2003.

Evidence from State Pathologist, Dr Marie Cassidy, revealed that the deceased suffered "six separate blows to his head", five of which were "inflicted in rapid succession…with considerable force" while he was lying on the ground.

"The young man was upright when the first blow was struck on the right side of his head. This blow could have caused him to collapse to the ground and lose consciousness," Dr Cassidy said.

The teenager, she said: "would have lost consciousness immediately and died rapidly". The boy’s skull "had been broken up and was like a jigsaw with some of the pieces fallen out of the wounds," she said, adding that fragments of his skull were found around his collar and under his right hand.

She said the head injuries were caused by a hammer or some type of blunt weapon.

Dr Cassidy calculated the victim would have died around 6.30pm on November 11, 2003. The jury heard that on the evening of November 11, 2003, the accused and his father had an appointment with a nun who is a psychotherapist between 6.15pm and 7.15pm.

The father of the accused told the court that his son had been living with him for six months.

He told the jury that he had only become part of his son's life in 2003. Before that, the accused had been living with his mother in his grandparents' house. He said his son had attempted suicide in September 2003 and that he "was very worried about him".

The prosecution case rested primarily on the evidence of several friends and acquaintances of the accused who testified that he had been talking about killing someone the week before and then admitted to the murder on the night in question.

A classmate of the accused told the court that at 7.15pm on the night in question he was out with two of his friends when they were joined by the accused.

The student said that the accused said: "Jesus, I’d love to kill someone, someone that no-one would care about, like [deceased’s name]."

Another classmate of the accused claimed in court that the 16-year-old accused wondered "how it would feel to kill someone" and that he would "like to try it out on [the deceased] first", the school friend said.

Anther friend gave evidence that the teenager said "he would like to hit someone on the back of the head with a hammer, like [deceased’s name]". None of the witnesses said they believed him.

Another witness testified that the accused admitted to the murder around 8pm on November 11. "He said: ‘I hit him in the head with a hammer’. He said he hid the hammer behind galvanised steel," she said.

A close friend of the accused who has known the defendant "since I was a child" also claimed the accused confessed to the alleged murder. After he rang him late on November 11, the friend claims the accused told him he's "after killing someone".

Two more phone calls followed late into the night with the accused's friend claiming he asked the defendant: "Are you serious?" to which he replied: "Yes."

"I said: 'Is he dead?' and he said: 'Yes,'" the school friend said. Later that night, the accused allegedly texted a school friend, telling him another boy "is after telling the gardaí on me".

The grandfather of the accused confirmed in court that a hammer was found under galvanised steel in his back garden during a Garda search, but insisted he had never seen the round-ended hammer before in his life.

"My hammer is a claw hammer," he said. The grandmother of the accused also testified that her grandson asked her for a hammer on the same evening but she couldn’t find one to give him.

The victim’s mother gave evidence early in the trial. She said after herself and her husband separated, her son lived with her. When she got home at 5.30pm, she presumed he was still out with his friends. She then became concerned and rang her son before 6pm.

"When I rang, I got the message: ‘This phone is out of service.’ I rang and I rang and I rang. I texted him. I checked his number and I rang again and there was still no answer. The same message kept coming up: ‘This phone is out of service,’" she said.

She told the court her son’s mobile was only a few weeks old. "That’s why I bought it, so we could stay in touch with each other," she said.

An adult witness also told the jury the accused allegedly called into him between 4pm and 4.30pm that evening. "He had a phone for me," he said. He said the 16-year-old allegedly sold him a phone "the week before and it wasn't working so he said he would get me another one straight away".

The accused called back at 5.50pm with a new mobile phone. The victim's phone was shown to the witness in court who said: "That's the same phone, the same model anyway".

The judge thanked the jury and excused each member from jury service for the next 10 years.