Burke guilty of girlfriend's murder
A Dublin man who stabbed his ex-girlfriend to death and seriously injured her mother has been convicted of murder and serious assault by a jury in the Central Criminal Court.
Declan Burke (aged 29), with a last address on the South Circular Road, Dublin 8, accepted he was responsible for the stabbings, but he denied two charges of the murder of Ms Jennifer Wilkinson (aged 24) at her home in the Rise, Boden Park, Ballyboden, Dublin on December 13, 2000 and assault causing serious harm to her mother, Mrs Mary Wilkinson, (aged 57) on the same date.
But after deliberating for over five hours since yesterday evening, a jury of seven men and five women found Burke guilty on both charges by a majority verdict of 11 to 1.
The jury had been directed by trial judge Mr Justice Barry White that there were three possible verdicts on the first charge open to them - guilty of murder, not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter, or guilty but insane.
But by a majority verdict, the jury rejected Burke's defence that he was either temporarily insane at the time of the stabbings or his alternative defence that he lacked the capacity to form a rational intent to kill or cause serious injury.
After the jury’s verdict, Mr Justice White granted a 15-minute adjournment to allow defence lawyer Patrick MacEntee SC to talk to his client. The mandatory sentence of life imprisonment for murder is then expected to be delivered by the judge.
The jury was excused from jury service for 10 years.
During the six-day trial, Burke claimed that his past history of years of sexual abuse at the hands of his father, a convicted abuser, had rendered him unable to control his anger and had left him with the ability to have complete memory blackouts of traumatic events.
He asked for a verdict of either manslaughter or guilty but insane. But the jury chose to reject those defences and to accept the prosecution case that Burke was bad, not mad.
The jury had heard that Burke brought a knife to the scene of the stabbings and that he waited for around five hours outside Jennifer Wilkinson's home in Boden Park before forcing his way in the door after her as she arrived home.
According to her mother, Mrs Maura Wilkinson, who survived a serious chest wound from the knife, after the stabbings, Burke left the house with the words: "That’s an end to it now".
