Garda murder charge Stephen Silver showed a “pattern of self-dramatising behaviour” in leading to confrontations and negotiations with gardaí, a consultant psychiatrist at the Central Criminal Court has said.
Professor Harry Kennedy said at Mr Silver’s trial that in previous encounters with gardaí during his history of involuntary admissions to psychiatric units, Mr Silver exhibited behaviours that are not characteristic of typical bipolar disorder.
According to RTE, he added: “They are angry and confrontational and dramatic. What happens in the course of mental illness is that ordinary personality features are exaggerated… that’s a product not of illness but of underlying personality.”
Professor Kennedy disagrees with the assessment of Dr. Brenda Wright, who said at trial that Mr. Silver’s responsibility for the shooting was reduced due to a relapse of bipolar disorder.
Professor Kennedy said a report from an earlier meeting in September 2006 found that Gardaí went to Mr Silver’s apartment and left his room carrying a long sword and wearing a black helmet and leather clothing.
After a while Mr Silver put down his sword, lay down and allowed the Gardaí to handcuff him and then have tea with them at the Garda station.
Professor Kennedy claimed that this was an example of severely threatening behaviour with a “high probability of causing harm”, showing that Mr Silver was familiar with staging personal dramas involving confrontation with gardaí.
He asserted his control and “mastery of the situation” and then took pleasure in ending the confrontation, the professor said.
According to RTE, he pointed to other incidents which he said “illustrate a pattern of self-dramatising behaviour” in which Mr Silver allegedly controlled a dramatic interaction with gardaí.
He said such behavior is not a characteristic of bipolar disorder.
Mr Silver, 46, a motorcycle mechanic from Aughavard, Foxford, Co Mayo, pleaded not guilty to the murder of Detective Garda Horkan knowing or recklessly that he was a member of An Garda Síochána acting in accordance with his duty.
He pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter due to reduced liability, in Castlerea, Co. Roscommon, on June 17, 2020.
Professor Kennedy told prosecutor Michael Delaney SC that in Mr Silver’s account of the meeting with Garda Horkan, he described a series of “intentional actions” such as taking control of the gun, pulling the trigger, stepping back, holding the gun with both hands, aiming and aiming and choosing to shoot Mr. Silver’s trunk.
He did not drop the gun, but instead fired repeatedly.
The professor stated that the ability to form intentions can be inferred from intentional actions, in which a person does “one thing after another after another,” reported RTE.
Professor Kennedy said there was further evidence that when the Gardaí arrived on the scene moments after the shooting, Mr Silver was able to make a decision to obey the Gardaí by getting down on the ground, but he also decided to what extent he would cooperate. refusing to be handcuffed from behind but allowing Gardaí to handcuff him from the front.
Professor Kennedy said this was a decision made for his convenience and based on his past experience with the Gardaí.
His interactions with gardaí showed that he could act in his own interest, Professor Kennedy said.
In interviews with him in Garda, Mr Silver showed “strength of will”, resisted Gardaí attempts to build a relationship and was “not at all suggestible”.
At one point he pretended to sleep for several minutes while Gardaí questioned him, the professor said, showing an “intact ability to act reflectively and not impulsively and having regard to his own best interest as he sees it,” reports RTE.
He said the “fleeting” ideas Mr Silver had the day before the shooting of a woman he was seeing as a member of MI6 were not fixed false beliefs and therefore were not delusions.
He disagreed with Dr. Wright’s view that Mr. Silver’s decision to give an old acquaintance a motorcycle early on the day of the shooting was evidence of a relapse of his mental illness.
Professor Kennedy said that the accused told the Gardaí that he had given the bicycle away because he had too many and was thinking of getting rid of some.
The professor said that this was a reasonable and rational explanation for why he did what he did.
Mr. Delaney had previously completed his cross-examination of Dr. Wright in which he set forth various points of view presented by Professor Kennedy.
She said that she did not agree with Professor Kennedy when he said that Mr. Silver was involved in “hostile pockets” when he became aggressive during the interview and told the Gardaí that he was a captain in the 62nd Cavalry .
Mr. Delaney said that, at some point during the interviews, Inspector Brian Hanley began providing evidence to Mr. Silver while Mr. Silver was singing, speaking Irish, making hostile jokes at investigators’ expense, and looking out the window.
Mr. Delaney said the professor’s point of view was that this was not a test for mania or psychosis, but “a defensive effort to avoid being presented with evidence”.
According to RTE, Dr. Wright stated that Mr. Silver’s behaviour was “so bizarre and unusual that it is more in keeping with a mental illness”.
She said it would be more appropriate for Mr. Silver to respond “no comment” if he didn’t want to commit.
Shee said the level of hostility he displayed was unusual and could not “adequately explained simply by hostility towards gardaí”, reports RTE.
Mr. Silver’s records, she said, showed that when he recovered after treatment after his 17 admissions to the psychiatric unit and after being treated at Central Mental Hospital in 2020, he was described as “easy to deal with.”
Records of him from Mountjoy Prison did not show him to be erratic, aggressive or hostile.
There was one account of an attempted assault on Mr. Silver by a fellow inmate that the defendant “handled calmly and appropriately,” Dr. Wright said.
She said that this is how he concluded that Mr. Silver’s behavior with gardaí was not his normal behavior.
Mr Delaney said that Professor Kennedy noted that in his last Gardaí interview, Mr Silver’s behavior became more extreme, but stated that “no psychiatric explanation was required for this other than Mr Silver’s personality”, reports RTE.
Dr. Wright stated that Mr. Silver’s personality does not “adequately account for the types of behaviours he engaged in”, reported RTE.
According to RTE, she said: “Mr Silver’s behaviour at the interviews is so out of keeping with the gravity of the situation and the context of the garda interviews that it is not sufficiently explained by the term, learned impunity.”
The trial continues in front of Mr Justice Paul McDermott and a jury of seven men and five women.
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