Brazilian murderer fails in appeal
A Brazilian man who was sentenced to life imprisonment for stabbing his flatmate more than 40 times after an argument over her relationships with other men has failed in an appeal against his conviction.
Marcio Goncalves da Silva (aged 32) had pleaded not guilty to murdering separated mother Joselita Dos Anjos Figueiredo Perieria Da Silva, to whom he was not related, on October 22, 2009.
However, da Silva had pleaded guilty to the 33-year-old’s manslaughter in the flat they shared above a take-away on Tara Street in Tullamore. This was not accepted by the prosecution.
He was jailed for life by Mr Justice Garrett Sheehan after a jury of 10 men and two women found him guilty of murder by a majority verdict of 11 to 1.
The Court of Criminal Appeal this morning found that the trial had been conducted with “conspicuous fairness” by Mr Justice Sheehan and rejected da Silva’s argument that conflicting testimony that went before the jury rendered the verdict unsafe.
Post mortem results indicated that mother-of-three Joselita da Silva died from massive internal bleeding, having suffered 51 stab wounds, including as many as three pairs of “through and through” injuries where the knife entered the body and passed through to exit on the opposite side.
The jury heard that the kitchen knife used to kill Joselita was struck with such force that it fractured her arms on impact and that one of the wounds inflicted was 12cm in depth.
There was evidence, which did not go before the jury, that the stab wounds formed an inverted heart shape.
Counsel for the applicant, Mr Colm Smyth SC, told the court that da Silva relied on the defence of provocation and the premise that he had “lost his mind”, inflicting 51 stab wounds on Joselita because of a realisation she was visiting other men in Drumlish, in what he described as “two minutes of madness”.
He said that the prosecution had opened the case on the basis that Joselita had intended to visit her boyfriend on the weekend she was killed, which the defence contended was the “tipping point” for da Silva and provoked him in to stabbing his flatmate.
Mr Smyth said that the prosecution then sought to change this by calling witness Detective Sergeant Declan Rock, who testified that Joselita had intended to visit her husband, and not her boyfriend, on the weekend she was killed. He said that there was no evidence to support this contention and it had undermined the entire defence of provocation as relied upon by the accused man.
Mr Smyth said that trial judge erred in principle by failing to accede to an application to discharge the jury after the evidence of Det Sgt Rock, and that Mr Justice Sheehan’s observation that it would be a “great pity” to discharge the jury at that stage went against the overriding interests of justice.
Presiding judge Mr Justice Donal O’Donnell, said that the source of the argument between the applicant and Joselita was “plain”, as Marcio da Silva himself told gardaí that he had rowed with his flatmate not because she was going to Drumlish to visit another man but because she was choosing not spend the weekend with him in Tullamore.
