A murder accused carried out a “planned and premeditated” stabbing of his teenage friend and to suggest he was acting in self-defence was “self-serving nonsense”, prosecuting counsel have told a murder trial jury.
However, defence lawyers have asked the jury to consider whether the accused’s actions were those of a “calm and collected person acting in cold blood”, or those of a person who was “spiralling out of control”.
Brandon Gavin (22) of Brookdale Road, Rivervalley, Swords, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of 19 year old Marius Mamaliga at Forest Court, Swords, on the evening of February 23rd, 2023. It is the prosecution’s case that Mr Gavin went to meet Mr Mamaliga armed with a knife.
The State say that the accused got into the back seat of a car behind the deceased and suddenly and without warning stabbed him in the neck with the intention of killing him or causing him serious injury. The jury has also heard that in garda interviews, the accused said he stabbed Mr Mamaliga in self-defence because he was in fear for his life as he owed money for drugs.
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The trial heard witness evidence that Mr Mamaliga had sold cannabis in the past and that Mr Gavin owed him €2,000 for cocaine. In his closing speech on Monday evening prosecuting counsel for the Director of Public Prosecutions, Ronan Kennedy, asked the jury to consider what the accused was doing directly before the killing itself, if he was so worried about what might happen to him.
On Friday, the jury heard that 24 hours before the stabbing, a phone belonging to Mr Gavin was used to search for “prison sentence for murder in Ireland” and was also used to engage with a woman on the dating app Tinder just 20 minutes before the stabbing.
Counsel told they jury that, in the minutes before the killing, Mr Gavin was on Tinder sending messages to two different women. He asked the jury if they thought these were the actions of a person who was nervous or panicking. Addressing the jury, Mr Kennedy pointed to Brandon Gavin’s Google search history, where he had searched for “prison sentence murder Ireland”, which counsel submitted gave a picture of the accused’s thinking and his intent.
He suggested this was clear, unambiguous evidence that the stabbing was “planned and premeditated” and said that to suggest Brandon Gavin was acting in self-defence was “self-serving nonsense”. He pointed out that the accused got into the car, fatally stabbed Mr Mamaliga in the neck and was “in and out in eight seconds flat”.
He submitted that Mr Gavin didn’t go straight home as he needed to get rid of the “murder weapon” and threw it somewhere he thought it wouldn’t be found before going home and changing out of the clothes he was wearing. Counsel said this indicated that the accused was not acting in self-defence – but that it was “murder – plain and simple”. He asked the jury to give a verdict according to the evidence, which the prosecution say is murder.
In his closing speech to the jury, defence counsel Dean Kelly pointed out that Mr Gavin made 47 phone calls on the day of the killing, trying and failing to get the money together for the drug debt that he owed. Mr Kelly said that the accused was in “a pretty bad way” and had spent the day in his bedroom trying to contact people that owed him money.
“We can smell his fear and distress off pages of phone records – desperately trying to get the money he owed together, but he was unsuccessful,” he said.
Mr Kelly asked the jury to consider whether the actions of Brandon Gavin were the actions of a “calm and collected person acting in cold blood”, or were the actions of a person who was “spiralling out of control”. Counsel asked them in addition to consider the possibility that when the accused lashed out in the car, he lashed out in fear and anger and self-preservation.
He asked the jury to look through the eyes of a 20-year-old who was spiralling with a history of depression, who when arriving home after the stabbing was “screaming at his sister and asked his father for a hug before arriving at a Garda station to confess what he had done”.
Mr Kelly said he wasn’t claiming that Mr Gavin was a saint – but argued that “the kid who was in Swords Garda station within an hour of the incident” was not a murderer.
Both the prosecution and defence have concluded their closing addresses to the jury and Ms Justice Eileen Creedon will conclude her charge to the seven men and five women of the panel today.
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