A gay escort from Chelmsford jailed for killing his 54-year-old client has seen his murder charge overturned.
Michael Brennan, 24, of The Green, Melbourne, was sentenced to a minimum 22 years in jail last December for stabbing and battering antiques dealer Paul Simons, of Bushey in Hertfordshire, to death in a Moulsham Street flat.
Yet on Friday (October 31) judges at the Court of Appeal in London ruled his conviction should be reduced to a manslaughter charge due to his diagnosed mental illnesses.
"All three members of this court have come to the view that this conviction for murder cannot stand," said Lord Justice Davis, sitting alongside Mr Justice King and Judge Michael Stokes QC.
During Brennan's two-week trial last year at Chelmsford Crown Court, the prosecution alleged the Broomfield Hospital cleaner lured Mr Simons to his death via a series of text messages on Friday, May 3, 2013.
Brennan, an ex-Rainsford High School pupil, had obtained a key to his boyfriend's flat in Moulsham Street while the latter was holidaying in Paris.
'Cold and calculated'
That night he stabbed a naked Mr Simons in the chest, hit him on the head with a hammer and carved ritualistic lines on his back with a knife.
He left Mr Simons' body in the flat, and notes which detailed plans to kill him and run away, but handed himself in at Chelmsford police station in New Street at about 11pm.
Essex Police described it as a "cold and calculated" murder.
During the trial his defence lawyer Sarah Forshaw QC argued he could not possibly be guilty of murder, and instead manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, because of his mental health history.
He had been admitted to a Linden Centre mental health unit in Chelmsford and defence witness Dr Gillian Mezey diagnosed him with "schizotypal personality disorder" and "emotionally unstable personality disorder".
Brennan's mother Angela also told jurors how he was the victim of physical abuse and homosexual bullying as a child and that he planned to live in the forest and "eat bats".
'Mild-mannered'
Brennan did not give evidence at the trial and remained impassive throughout.
"This defendant was suffering from a mental illness," said Ms Forshaw on Friday.
"He wasn't in a position to explain the rationale behind what he did and his state had improved significantly since he was in prison.
"It would have been potentially misleading for the jury to see the defendant in his improved state and to, in some way, use that amelioration in his condition to question the diagnosis of an expert who had said he has a mental illness.
"The defendant was, on the face of it, remarkably normal.
"This was not a man rocking in the dock or waving his arms about or coming out with expletives in a gratuitous fashion.
"To all ends and purposes, he was a perfectly mild-mannered 22-year-old boy."
The judges said they would give reasons for their verdict at a later date.
It will be several months before he is re-sentenced.
