This afternoon a Central Criminal Court jury found 25-year-old Dubliner Thomas Connors not guilty of killing the man he thought was the devil after less than an hours deliberation.

Over the course of the short trial they had heard that Connors had killed 30-year-old Michael Hughes in a savage attack with a pair of garden sheers that left the deceased with 143 injuries.  He told gardai, phoned by neighbours who heard the screaming, that he had fought the devil and the devil was now gone.

Mr Hughes had been up visiting his cousin in Dublin from Offally.  On the night he died, December 15th 2007, he had been out with his cousin and some friends.  His cousin had gone home early and when Mr Hughes tried to get into the flat at Manor Villa in Mount Argos, Harolds Cross he couldn’t get an answer.  Cutting his losses he decided to sleep on the stairwell but tragically Connors burst in through the glass doors of the apartment building with the shears and attacked him.

He had sought medical help on three occasion in the days leading to the killing.  A schizophrenic, he was hearing voices and suffering the delusion that his wife was the daughter of the devil.  His wife had been so frightened by his behaviour that she had taken their child and gone to a women’s shelter.  On the first two visits Connors was not admitted although he was given tablets on his second attempt to get treatment.

Finally, the day before the killing, doctors in St Vincents Hospital decided he needed to be admitted but Connors was gone by the time an ambulance arrived to move him, four hours later.  In the hours before the killing he became convinced that the devil was hiding in his apartment in the building beside the one Mr Hughes was staying in.  Connors took his duvet outside and stabbed it because he thought the devil was hiding there.  Some time later he happened on Mr Hughes.

Mr Justice George Birmingham told the jury that this was a case of “mind boggling sadness” and, if it hadn’t been for the issue of insanity, it would have been a perfectly clear and appalling case of murder.

Cases like this have become relatively commonplace before the courts since a change in the law in 2006 allowed the verdict of not guilty of murder by reason of insanity.  Even though in cases like this the outcome has been agreed by all sides, the evidence must still be heard in front of a jury who must then decide if they accept the not guilty by reason of insanity plea.

The jury today accepted the views of the psychiatrists both sides presented them and apart from querying whether the accused having smoked cannabis before the killing was a factor, came back with their decision within an hour.

This isn’t always the way though.  In last year’s trial of Henry McLaren, a paranoid schizophrenic who killed his uncle with an axe because he thought he was a devil (again).  He insisted on calling himself Red, heard Jimmy Hendrix talking to him and thought Sinn Fein had killed all the American Indians.

McLaren too had a history of mental illness and was quite obviously still mentally ill.  Even so the jury took almost three hours to find him guilty eventually only able to turn in a majority verdict.

I can almost understand the problem the McLaren jurors had with the process.  It’s easy for those of us who are used to hearing these cases to see what does and doesn’t fall within the 2006 law.  But for a jury, hearing details of almost unimaginable and invariably unprovoked violence, the idea that the person sitting on the bench opposite them is not responsible for his actions must sometimes be hard to swallow.

Add the that the knowledge that the person who carried out this often “frenzied” attack will not be handed a prison sentence but will instead be removed to the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum for as long as it takes until he is deemed better.

I hasten to add here that in these cases the accused is unlikely to get released any time soon but I’m sure there are those who would find that still an insufficient punishment.

I’ve often wondered why the cases are heard in front of a jury at all.  Why the judge can’t just decree the verdict as he would order an acquittal in a case of insufficient evidence.  But once you’ve watched a few of these trial you see why.  If someone is suffering from severe mental delusions they are absolutely not themselves and cannot be held accountable for their actions in any normal way.

Yes, when you listen to the progression of someone’s delusion you can frequently see a twisted logic of a sort running through the heart of it but that isn’t the same as the full understanding of the consequences of your actions.  Of course they should get the care they need.

But also you realise that if a judge alone decided every not guilty by reason of insanity case the cries of injustice would be swift in coming.  Just because someone is insane shouldn’t mean they lose the basic right to be judged by their peers.  All you can do is make sure they have all the relevant information available to them.

There will always be some who disagree with the views of even the most eminent psychiatrist.  Who think that someone hearing voices should just snap out of it and take responsibility but, as today’s jury obviously realised, insane is insane and there’s no point leaving someone to the mercies of the prison system who needs dedicated psychiatric care.

What is troubling about case of Thomas Connors, and that of Henry McLaren, is that they were both prediagnosed schizophrenics who had not been receiving the treatment they needed.  If Thomas Connors had been admitted when he first sought help, Michael Hughes would still be alive.  He would have been able to marry his fiancee and build the life that they were planning together.

I’m not saying that both killing were 100% avoidable, there’s no way of knowing that, but these are simply two cases where the psychiatric services were not available to someone who needed them and someone else died as a result.  There’s already a huge stigma against mental illness in Ireland that means that people or even their families do not always seek out the help they require.  Add to this an over stretched health service and it’s a recipe for such cases of “mind boggling sadness”.