Jury begin deliberating in Louth woman's murder trial

A jury has begun deliberating in the trial of a Louth woman accused of murdering her boyfriend at her home on New Year's morning six years ago. 

The accused woman, who says she was sexually abused as a child, has asked for a verdict of manslaughter on the grounds that the deceased provoked her by sexually assaulting her.

However, the prosecution have called the sexual assault allegation "an outrageous lie" and said it had been told against a man who was now dead and could not give any alternative account of events.

It is the prosecution case that the mother-of-three intended to cause "at least serious injury" to her partner when she picked the biggest knife from a knife block and stabbed him four times with it. 

Mr Justice Paul McDermott concluded his charge this morning in the Central Criminal Court trial of Paula Farrell (47) of Rathmullen Park in Drogheda, who has pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to manslaughter for the unlawful killing of Wayne 'Quilly' McQuillan (30) at Ms Farrell's home on New Year's Day 2014. 

Ms Farrell has testified that Mr McQuillan had tried to have sex with her, that she did not want to have sex and that he had started strangling her with his hands before she went to the kitchen for a knife. "I thought I was dying, I couldn't breathe," she told her barrister Caroline Biggs SC. Ms Farrell has accepted in her evidence that she stabbed Mr McQuillan with a knife four times but said she only remembered stabbing him twice.

Addressing the jury today, Mr Justice McDermott said the prosecution must have proven every element of the offence of murder, namely that it was an unlawful killing and Ms Farrell had an intention to kill. 

The judge has told the jurors that the test for provocation is a subjective one. He said they must ask themselves whether Ms Farrell, with her particular history and personality, may have been provoked to such an extent as to lose her self-control in response to the acts and words of Mr McQuillan, so that she was unable to prevent herself from committing the stabbing. He said the jury had to identify the material which gave rise to the provocation and in this case it appeared to be the alleged sexual assault by Mr McQuillan on Ms Farrell.

Mr Justice McDermott said if they were satisfied of a reasonable possibility based on credible evidence that Ms Farrell had such a total loss of self-control then the verdict was not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter. The real issue in this case comes down to the mental state of Ms Farrell when she killed Mr McQuillan, he said. 

The jury can return three verdicts in relation to the murder charge against Ms Farrell, namely; guilty of murder, not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter or not guilty. 

However, the judge said the parties in this case faced the reality that the two verdicts open to them were guilty of murder or not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter.

Mr Justice McDermott told the 11 jurors that they must be unanimous in their verdict before sending them away to an empty courtroom rather than the smaller jury room to begin deliberations at 11.36am. 

"Since the emergency within the State, you will be taken to a nearby courtroom. It will be secured in such a way so no one has access to it. Any questions, I'm here at your disposal. Take as much time as you require," he said. 

This is the last jury to deliberate at the Central Criminal Court as a result of reduced court sittings in the capital due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The four-week trial continued despite the coronavirus outbreak with extra measures put in place by the Courts Service to allow the jurors to maintain social distancing. Jurors sat spread out across the courtroom, rather than just in the jury box, in order to maintain the recommended social distancing during the trial. 

Evidence has been given that Ms Farrell was sexually abused by a named man between seven and 14 years of age and that she started to drink heavily when she was 20 years old. 

Ms Farrell told gardai in her interviews that she and Mr McQuillan had started "tackling each other" in the kitchen on the night and "he had me by the wrist and neck and I got a bump on my head from him." She said Mr McQuillan "had me on the two-seater in the kitchen" and when she got up, she said, "I didn't want him to get the better of me. I got the knife then and I stuck the knife in him." She thought she stabbed him "towards the top of his chest" and a second time "a bit lower down", the court heard. 

Former Deputy State Pathologist Dr Michael Curtis testified that he found four stab wounds on Mr McQuillan, one to the upper right arm, one to the front of the chest and two wounds to the left shoulder which were situated 1.1cm apart from each other and parallel. The expert witness told the jury that there could have been “potential survival with prompt medical intervention” for Mr McQuillan.