Ireland - Conor, 9, Darragh, 7, & Carla McGinley, 3, dead, woman taken to hospital, Dublin, Jan 2020

[Harchmare]

Jury finds Deirdre Morley not guilty of murdering her children by reason of insanity

Not guilty... I'm having a really hard time with his verdict, I understand the insanity bit from a legal point of view but somehow I feel it's too ... lenient. I know she'd been struggling with her mental health for years before it happened and that's very sad, but not everyone who is bipolar or depressed goes and kills their children because they feel it's "morally right" to do so. It's still murder in my eyes. The fact that she hid what she intended to do, tells me she knew it was wrong. She tried the evening before and failed, so she tried again. She talked to her husband several times and he didn't notice a thing. Is that psychosis?

If you compare it to Clodagh Hawe for example, who was brutally murdered by her husband, along with her children. If the husband had survived, would he have gotten off with an insanity verdict? He didn't have the same mental health problem as DM, but he also felt he was "doing the right thing" in killing them all...

 

[nothinonyou]

Yes I think anyone who deliberately murders another person is not 100% sane at the time anyway, so all murders could have this logic applied. A lot of people suffer manic depression but do not harm others. I just never really agree with the term "by reason of insanity" anyway, it seems so outdated to me. So anyone who suffers severe depression is deemed "insane" by law? Not sure that's totally fair or correct

 

[Harchmare]

"A person will be considered legally insane if they were suffering from a mental disorder at the time of the offence and, as a result,

• Did not understand what he or she was doing or
• Did not know what he or she was doing was wrong or
• Was unable to not commit the crime

If someone is considered to have actually committed the offence but was insane at the time, the verdict may be not guilty by reason of insanity. This decision is made by a jury where the case is tried by a jury. Where there is no jury, the decision is made by a judge. If this verdict is reached, the judge may order that the person be committed to a psychiatric hospital or unit in broadly the same way as applies in the case of being unfit to be tried."

Criminal insanity and mental health

So the psychiatrists felt that two out of three applied (not the first one).

 

[Rikissa]

The father of the children in January 2024.

Dad says kids would be alive today if he was told of severity of wife's illness

On the fourth anniversary of Conor, Darragh and Carla's death, Andrew McGinley said 'nothing has changed' since they died

www.dublinlive.ie

Everything was 'normal' on day before Deirdre Morley killed her three children

On the 4th anniversary of Darragh, Conor and Carla's death, Andrew McGinley said he believed Deirdre was getting better

www.dublinlive.ie