Victim’s brother secures order quashing inquest’s suicide verdict

A BROTHER of model Irma Mali’s former boyfriend, the late Marius Simanaitis, has secured a High Court order quashing an inquest verdict that Mr Simanaitis committed suicide with a handgun and a new inquest has been ordered by Mr Justice Peter Charleton.

The judge said the background to the case was that on March 11, 2009, the applicant, Donatus Simanaitis’s brother Marius died in circumstances where he had a gun in his hand and there was a single gunshot to his head at his apartment off the Navan Road, North Dublin.

For the sake of neutrality, the judge said the three people he described as A, B and C were with him at the time of his death. He said A and B were girlfriend and boyfriend and they were drinking from 3pm until 6am the next morning. Two bottles of vodka and one bottle of Hennessy cognac were consumed. The boy and girl went to the next room leaving Marius, on the couch together with another pal he called C. It was in the course of that time when the lights were off there was gunshot. C was startled and heard a noise like a scratching or shuffling and found the deceased had fallen over and had a hole in his head with blood everywhere.

A Garda investigation was held and at present there was nothing to suggest there was anything in the investigation that was anything but proper. However, the deceased’s brother was not satisfied with that and wrote to the Taoiseach, the President and two branches of the Garda, along with the Garda Ombudsman, putting forward certain suspicions which it was very hard to see on the basis of the evidence, but that was not a matter for him (the judge), said Mr Justice Charleton.

The judge said the applicant felt he was shut out when the inquest went ahead in his absence in January last having indicated he would be free in February.

It was pleaded on the coroner’s (Dr Kieran Geraghty) behalf that in exercise of his discretion the coroner acted in good faith in refusing to accede to the application for an adjournment when he received information from the Garda the lives of persons scheduled to give evidence were under threat and those witnesses might not turn up should the inquest be adjourned.

Lawyers for Mr Simanaitis argued that it was clear this unsubstantiated threat was taken at face value with no meaningful enquiry taken into its veracity and allegedly no balancing exercise performed to weigh this threat with the right of the next of kin to be present.

Mr Justice Charleton said he asked himself what he would do in the circumstances and concluded he would have taken a tough response in accordance with the duty of the coroner and allow the family of the deceased to participate as they wanted to. He believed that by reason of the startling evidence suddenly presented to the coroner he did not consider that possibility. There were, therefore, errors and he was quashing the verdict of the inquest and ordering a fresh inquest.