Review of inquest into boy’s death in custody begins

A JUDICIAL review of the inquest into the death of a 14-year-old boy following overnight detention in Garda custody gets under way in the High Court today.

The parents of Brian Rossiter, who died two days after falling into a coma in Clonmel Garda Station almost six years ago, are challenging the decision by the Cork City Coroner to refuse to call independent forensic pathology evidence.

Pat and Siobhán Rossiter wanted to call evidence from two British professors of forensic pathology who had examined the case.

A statutory inquiry, established by former justice minister Michael McDowell, has already found Brian Rossiter’s overnight detention at the Garda station in Clonmel was “unlawful”, as were the circumstances surrounding his arrest.

Both of the British pathologists concluded that the fatal head injury to the teen was “much more likely” to have been inflicted at the time of his arrest, or during his detention, rather than in an assault that took place 44 hours earlier on a Clonmel street.

One of the pathologists was engaged by the Rossiter family; the other by the statutory inquiry.

Brian Rossiter was arrested on the night of September 10, 2002, and found in a coma the following morning. He was brought to hospital in Clonmel and then transferred to Cork University Hospital where he died two days later.

Last year, the Cork City Coroner ruled the inquest jury should only hear the evidence of state pathologist Dr Marie Cassidy.

Her opinion is that the fatal injury could have happened at the time of the arrest and detention of Brian Rossiter, or when he was assaulted two days earlier.

The inquest was put on hold by the High Court after Brian’s parents started the judicial review process.

According to the Rossiters’ solicitor, Cian O’Carroll, their case is also challenging the coroner’s decision to amend the draft deposition of one witness by deleting “the only available evidence of what Brian Rossiter was said to have remarked about his treatment at the hands of gardaí during the course of his arrest and detention”.

The judicial review is scheduled to last two days.