Man jailed for stabbing sister's boyfriend
A man who was captured on video camera stabbing his sister's boyfriend to death has been jailed for life in the first ever murder trial to take place outside Dublin.
Johnny 'Taz' McNamara (aged 31), of Craeval Park, Moyross, Limerick, had pleaded not guilty to the murder of 27-year-old John O'Sullivan in Moyross on August 13, 2001.
However, a jury of eight men and four women returned a unanimous guilty verdict today at the Central Criminal Court in Limerick.
Mr O'Sullivan died following a vicious early morning row in which he was stabbed 11 times with a butcher's knife and was left to bleed to death.
At an earlier sitting, the jury heard that the accused had armed himself with the knife after he heard his sister, Louise McNamara, being beaten by her boyfriend.
Johnny McNamara chased John O'Sullivan around Craeval Park to a green area at Pineview Gardens in Moyross where he stabbed him to death, the court heard.
In a statement read out to the court, McNamara had described John O'Sullivan as a friend and said he did not mean to kill him.
Stills of CCTV footage was shown to the jury during the trial which the prosecution said captured the victim's brutal death and identified Johnny McNamara as the man armed with a knife.
The video footage showed the accused returning to the scene where the victim lay bleeding to death some moments after the row to stab him one final time.
Evidence was also heard from the Deputy State Pathologist, Dr Marie Cassidy, who said that John O'Sullivan had suffered stab wounds to the head, neck, chest, shoulder, arm and back.
At today's sitting, the jurors - who had already started their deliberations - asked to re-watch the three minute-long tape of Mr O'Sullivan's murder in real time.
They returned the unanimous guilty verdict after a little over two hours of deliberations at the Central Criminal Court.
Imposing a mandatory life sentence, Mr Justice Paul Carney observed that it was the first time a Limerick jury had sat in a murder trial and he exempted then from jury service for life.
Det Sgt Jim Ryan of Mayorstone garda station told the court that Johnny McNamara had 14 previous convictions including convictions for assault, larceny and misuse of drugs.
After the sentence was handed down - the dead man's father, Liam O'Sullivan, told the court that his family had been "devastated" by his son's death.
Earlier, Mr Justice Carney reminded the court that he had ordered a bench warrant for the arrest of a prosecution witness - Aisling Bond - who failed to appear at the trial.
"This is unfinished business which is required to be dealt with whether the trial is over or not," said Justice Carney.
The conclusion of the trial marked the first time in the history of the State that a murder case has been heard outside the capital.
The decision was taken to re-locate the Central Criminal Court to the Mid-West because of the backlog of Limerick murder trials.
