The jury in the case of a Co Wicklow man accused of murdering a woman who threatened to tell his wife about their one-night stand if he did not give her money has been told they can consider the defence of provocation in this case.
Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy told the jurors that provocation is where there is a sudden, unforeseen, onset of passion, which at the time when the accused killed the deceased, totally deprived him of self-control.
Roy Webster, 40, from Ashbree, Ashford in Co Wicklow, has admitted killing 47-year-old Anne Shortall on 3 April 2015, but he says he did not intend to kill her and has pleaded not guilty to murder.
His plea of guilty to manslaughter was not accepted by the State.
Today the judge said it was not enough to show that the accused lost his temper, or was easily provoked.
He said to convict Mr Webster of murder, they must be satisfied that he intended to kill or cause serious injury to Ms Shortall.
He said they could find him not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter if they were satisfied that he had not intended to kill or cause serious injury or that he had been provoked.
The judge said the prosecution had to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he was not provoked.
Earlier Mr Webster's lawyers told the jury he lost control when he felt his back was against the wall.
Defence Counsel Brendan Grehan suggested his client was a good man who did a bad thing.
He said this was not a case where the killing was planned in any way at all but it was a case where someone lost control of himself when he was backed into a corner.
The jury has heard Ms Shortall, who owed money for rent and was in danger of being evicted, told Mr Webster she was pregnant and asked for £6,500 Sterling for an abortion.
Mr Webster told gardaí he hit her over the head with a hammer after she threatened to tell his wife and to "ruin him".
The court has heard Ms Shortall was not pregnant and knew she was not pregnant.
Mr Grehan said this was a case that had no winners. It was a question of the degree of loss suffered by various people as a result of the actions of Mr Webster.
He said to characterise Mr Webster's emotions when he finally confessed to gardaí as self-pity was not to reconcile them with the facts.
He added that we would all like to think we would never do this. However he suggested human beings, if pushed far enough, can do things that shock themselves and those who know them best.
He said the criminal law recognised that people can be pushed to breaking point and can do things they absolutely regret, which have enormous consequences.
The court was also told Ms Shortall's fear of eviction and of having no home for her children and grandchildren to come had caused her to come up with this idea of getting money from Mr Webster to solve her problems.
He said there would have been no proof of this as text messages had been deleted and could not be recovered.
But the jurors had heard a Facebook message Ms Shortall sent to a man she thought was related to Mr Webster where she said "tell your friend, Roy, I need €5000 for an abortion."
He said Ms Shortall's desperate circumstances explained how Mr Webster was put in this situation and why "good men do bad things".
Mr Grehan said Mr Webster's actions were born out of his own desperate view of his situation. But it was an overreaction.
He said none of the evidence suggested that the killing was planned.
He said there was no cover-up and no real attempt to get rid of evidence. He said Mr Webster just drove home after killing Ms Shortall and left her body in his van. He told the court his client was frozen.
He claimed Mr Webster was a person "on autopilot", going back to normal life, waiting for the inevitable knock on the door. Mr Grehan said it was a reaction borne out of fear.
Mr Grehan said the preponderance of the evidence of the State Pathologist, Professor Marie Cassidy suggested that Ms Shortall had died from hammer blows to the head and not from the blocking of her airways by duct tape wrapped around her face.
He said the prosecution had not proved that she had died from the obstruction of her airways.
He told the jurors it was important they were as objective and as clinical as they could be. He urged them to find Mr Webster not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter.
