Lawyers for Richard Satchwell unsuccessfully tried to have the murder charge against him withdrawn and substituted with manslaughter in the fourth week of the trial.
Mr Justice Paul McDermott rejected arguments from Satchwell’s defence team – made at the end of the evidence and in the absence of the jury – there was no evidence on which the jury could safely find Satchwell had the necessary legal intention for murder, to kill or cause serious injury to his wife, Tina.
That was “a huge lacuna” in the prosecution case, defence counsel Brendan Grehan argued.
There was no expert evidence that Satchwell’s account of how his wife died was not possible, he said. A belief by gardaí that she could not have died in the manner he described was not evidence, he said.
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Satchwell had claimed his wife flew at him with a chisel and that he fell, and she was on top of him trying to stab him with the chisel. He said, in an attempt to protect himself, he was holding her up by the belt of her dressing-gown, which was around her neck, when she suddenly collapsed.
If the murder charge was not withdrawn, counsel asked that the jury be directed to consider self-defence as a full or partial defence.
[ Richard Satchwell found guilty of murdering his wife in 2017Opens in new window ]
Opposing the application, prosecuting counsel Gerardine Small said there was sufficient evidence from which the jury could infer intent to kill or cause serious injury. This included Satchwell’s reply: “Guilty or not guilty – guilty,” when he was charged by gardaí with murder on October 12th, 2023.
There was no evidence on the cause of death because Satchwell buried his wife in a manner that ensured it was not available, Small said.
There was “a wealth of evidence” from the surrounding circumstances from which the jury can infer intent, she argued.
There was also a potential motive: Satchwell said his wife was threatening to leave him and she had “wasted 28 years” on him, the prosecuting barrister argued.
In his ruling, the judge said it was exclusively for the jury, not him, to decide which elements of the prosecution evidence, including Satchwell’s account, were to be preferred or rejected. He said that it was also up to the jury to decide any inferences to be drawn and the reliability and weight of the evidence.
An intention to kill or cause serious injury could be formed in a moment or over time, he said. Evidence of intent is almost always drawn from surrounding circumstances and an accused’s actions before, during and after the event.
In this case, there was a “prolonged” period before Tina Satchwell’s remains were discovered and no direct evidence of cause of death. Because Richard Satchwell disposed of her body, there was no evidence of fractures, or of bruising, on the “very small amount” of muscle tissue found on her remains, and no body organs.
A motive was not necessary to prove intent but its existence might assist, he said.
There were inferences to be drawn from Satchwell’s actions and what he did at the time of the killing, he said. He had not called gardaí or sought assistance for his wife and had created the false impression she was alive from that day on, said the judge.
There was evidence that Satchwell had, over years, told “lie after lie”, repeatedly saying she had gone away but he was willing to have her back while telling “parallel stories” which “destroyed her character”, including scenarios of sudden desertion.
There were “quite cynical” attempts to engage her family’s help in making public appeals, including asking her cousin Sarah Howard to take the freezer he had used to store her body.
Satchwell had also said he was assaulted by his wife and suggested she had mental health issues. The judge said there may be a conflict whether some of these matters were true.
His lies could properly be relied on as evidence to establish his state of mind at the time of the killing, the judge said.
His attempts to avoid guilt appeared “breathtaking and cynical” and the prosecution was entitled to rely on his burial of the body and the “disrespect” in his wife being “disposed of in a hole under the stairs that he cemented in”.
The jury was entitled to consider this as evidence of “a degree of malevolence” and “total focus on protecting himself against discovery” and might conclude it belied his asserted respect and love for her, the judge said.
The jury was entitled to consider, in context, what weight to be given to his replies to gardaí in his October 12th, 2023 interview, including his reply when he was charged by gardaí with murder.
It was for the jury to decide what his acts were and their “natural and probable consequences”, bearing in mind all the evidence.
As a matter of law, the murder charge should not be withdrawn, the judge ruled.
On Tuesday, after the judge completed his directions to the jury on the law and evidence, the defence applied to have the jury discharged that would have led to a fresh trial.
Grehan, Satchwell’s defence barrister, argued the judge’s charge was not balanced and was akin to a second prosecution speech.
He argued that it contained an excessive focus on the prosecution’s interpretation of evidence. Small, the prosecuting counsel, said there was no basis for the “last resort” discharge remedy, and the charge was fair and balanced.
The judge rejected the defence’s complaints and refused the discharge application but said he would address the jury on two additional matters.
He did so, telling them that, in the context of Satchwell’s potential motivation, and the context of whether he intended to kill or cause serious injury, they must bear in mind he had said he was besotted with his wife.
The judge told them that Satchwell loved his wife notwithstanding a situation where, on his own account and that of some witnesses, he had been subject to violence by her, she had ceased sexual relations and he would have liked them to have children but she did not want children.
The evidence was he “attended to her in very great detail” and there was no evidence he ever assaulted her, the judge said.
