Limerick man's conviction for murder in cocaine-fuelled stabbing unsafe, court told

Mark Crawford had only known Patrick ‘Pa’ O’Connor for one day when he stabbed him six times, with wounds piercing the victim’s heart and neck

Mark Crawford claimed he had been acting in self-defence at the time. File photo: Press 22

A man who stabbed a new drinking pal to death during a cocaine-fuelled bender was convicted of murder after the jury was wrongly advised about the issue of self-defence by the trial judge, his lawyers told the Court of Appeal on Thursday.

Mark Crawford (44) had only known Patrick ‘Pa’ O’Connor (24) for one day when he stabbed him six times, with wounds piercing the victim’s heart and neck, at Fitzgerald’s Bar on Sexton Street in Limerick city.

Crawford, formerly of Quarry Road, Thomondgate, Co. Limerick, later pleaded not guilty to Mr O’Connor’s murder on July 7 or 8, 2018, claiming he had been acting in self-defence at the time.

The jury at the Central Criminal Court, however, did not accept his defence and he was unanimously convicted of the murder charge following a trial in October 2020. Sentencing Crawford to a mandatory life term, Ms Justice Tara Burns described the fatal attack as an act of “madness fuelled by drink and drugs”.

Crawford has appealed the conviction on the grounds that Ms Justice Burns did not adequately instruct the jury on how they should consider his accounts of events on the night in question and that the guilty verdict was, therefore, “unsafe and unsatisfactory”.

It has been further submitted that the judge in her charge had failed to instruct the jury that it was incumbent on the prosecution to prove that the appellant did not honestly believe that it was necessary to use reasonable force to defend himself from a perceived threat or attack.

“It may or may not be the strongest self-defence case but it was a self-defence case from the start,” Patrick McGrath SC, for Crawford, told the three-judge court at Thursday’s hearing.

Responding to the defence’s submissions, John Fitzgerald SC, for the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), said the issues raised by Mr McGrath had been “fully opened and canvassed in front of Judge Burns”.

“This really is a situation where the dog didn’t bark,” Mr Fitzgerald said. “The test [of self-defence] is well established and understood and the jury was charged unimpeachably,” counsel continued.

“This was a confrontation in a pub, where the parties had been together and Mr Crawford produced a knife. Mr Crawford had been by the door and could have left.” Judgment has been reserved.