Jury due to decide
ALLEGED Christmas Eve killer Brian Cahill is “clearly guilty of a cowardly murder” and his version of events is a “desperate farce” aimed at saving his skin, prosecutors claimed.
Cahill is alleged to have stabbed teenager Owen Kerry to death in a “deliberate, murderous act” at a social club in Cramlington.
Making his closing speech to jurors at Newcastle Crown Court, prosecutor Andrew Robertson said Cahill and partner Lyndsey Harper should be convicted of a joint attack.
However their barristers argued they should be found not guilty of murder.
Referring to Cahill, Mr Robertson told the jury: “We submit there is only one issue for you to decide in this case. Did he stab Owen deliberately or was it, or may it have been, as he maintains, simply a tragic accident. Members of the jury, if one were to consider the prosecution evidence alone, we would submit it’s abundantly clear this was a deliberate, murderous act.”
Mr Robertson said Cahill had threatened Owen and his friends before stabbing him, “a threat he carried out in a murderous manner to fatal effect”.
He added: “After his arrest, as you might expect, he lied his head off.”
The prosecutor, referring to the evidence Cahill gave during the trial, continued: “That wound, he says now, was an accident...The evidence at that point descended into a desperate farce in his attempts to save his skin.
“He just so happened, as luck would have it, to fall on to an open knife that just happened to be lying there where he fell on the floor of Cramlington Working Men’s Club that Christmas Eve.
“And then what happens? Not knowing what it was, for some unknown reason he picked up this object he had fallen on, even though he had no reason to do so and no explanation as to why he should pick it up.
“He then says he pushed out as he was getting up and, despite the way he was holding the knife, it still managed to cause that horrific, deep, upward fatal wound.”
Mr Robertson added: “Members of the jury, were this not so gravely serious, we would submit what he has said to you would be laughable. What you have seen in this court is a man who is clearly guilty of a cowardly murder, stabbing deliberately an unarmed man to death on Christmas Eve and being too much of a coward to face up to the terrible thing he has done.”
Mr Robertson said jurors should also convict Harper, of whom he said: “We submit she is clever and devious, much cleverer than her boyfriend.”
Peter Makepeace QC, for Cahill, told the jury: “Brian Cahill says he literally fell on the knife, he took it up in the panic of the situation he found himself in and pushed out and never intended to stab Owen Kerry and that was a horrible, unintended consequence.”
Robert Woodcock QC, for Harper, said: “We respectfully submit the prosecution is woefully short of the standard it must reach in order to convince you she is in fact guilty of this offence of murder.”
Cahill, 35, of Northern Terrace, Dudley and Harper, 37, of Queens Gardens, Annitsford, both North Tyneside, deny murder.
Harper further denies the alternative charge attempting to cause GBH with intent and performing acts intending to pervert the course of justice. She admits affray.
The trial continues.