A Boston jury has found a local bouncer guilty of the manslaughter of a Dublin carpenter after more than eight hours of deliberation.<\/p>\n
Barry Whelan (46) was found lying on the street in downtown Boston on St Patrick\u2019s Day in 2023. He was taken to hospital where he was treated for a skull fracture and brain haemorrhaging. He died three days later, on March 20th.<\/p>\n
Mr Whelan, who emigrated to the US from Dublin in 2002, had been working as a carpenter and was living in Woburn, north of Boston.<\/p>\n
Sanusi Sadiq (30), a bouncer with an address in Quincy, Massachusetts, was found guilty of manslaughter after the jury saw CCTV video of Sadiq striking Mr Whelan in the face. <\/p>\n
A previous trial resulted in a hung jury. <\/p>\n
Sadiq testified in both trials. In both trials the jury came back to the judge asking for clarity regarding an involuntary manslaughter finding. Jurors had to find that Sadiq knew or should have known that striking Mr Whelan would endanger his life, or was highly likely to cause harm. <\/p>\n
Sadiq\u2019s defence attorney Michael Chinman told jurors that Mr Whelan approached the defendant, a stranger on a downtown street corner, and called him \u201clazy\u201d and a \u201cf***ing N-word\u201d prior to Sadiq striking Mr Whelan. <\/p>\n
Mr Chinman insisted that his client \u201cdeliberately did not use enough force to hurt Barry Whelan\u201d. He told jurors that Sadiq used the side of his wrist and that the strike did not cause injury \u2013 \u201cnot even a bruise\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr Whelan \u201cdied as a result of the defendant\u2019s actions,\u201d argued assistant district attorney Jillian Bannister. <\/p>\n
Ms Bannister told jurors that while it was \u201cnot okay to say the N-word, it is also not okay to take the law into your own hands\u201d.<\/p>\n
Sadiq intended to strike Mr Whelan and \u201cin doing so he endangered Mr Whelan\u2019s life\u201d, Ms Bannister told the court.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese intentional actions of Mr Sadiq are what we are here for,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Ms Bannister previously argued that the allegation of racism is \u201ca convenient interpretation\u201d and that the jury could not know what transpired from Mr Whelan\u2019s perspective, other than he was a carpenter from Ireland, celebrating the holiday, she said. Mr Whelan\u2019s brother, Darren Whelan, flew in from Dublin to watch the first trial in person. He watched the second trial from Dublin via Zoom. <\/p>\n
Sentencing is set for February 23rd. Sadiq is facing up to 20 years in prison. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Boston jury has found a local bouncer guilty of the manslaughter of a Dublin carpenter after more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-259094","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}