Garda assault trial jury shown mobile phone footage

A Dublin Circuit Criminal Court jury has been shown mobile phone video footage of the young man accusing four gardaí of assault allegedly taken after the incident.

Mr Philip Finnegan told Mr Tom O’Connell SC, prosecuting, that he had been playing football with a number of other youths in a pitch near Basin Street flats in Dublin 8 when he spotted between five and seven marked and unmarked garda patrol cars driving around the complex.

He said he recorded a video of Mr Owen Gaffney on his mobile phone after gardaí had left the complex and later handed this footage to a Garda Ombudsman official.

He told Mr O’Connell that he recorded Mr Gaffney when he saw him in “a horrific state” with “blood all over him”.

Gardaí Sean O’Leary, Eoin Murtagh, Alan Conlon and Claire Delaney have pleaded not guilty to forcing entry to a premises at Basin Street Upper, entering as a trespasser and assaulting Mr Gaffney (aged 21) causing him harm on February 17, 2008.

Gda Murtagh, Gda Conlon and Gda Delaney also pleaded not guilty to the false imprisonment of Ms Gaffney on the same occasion.

Mr Finnegan told Mr Colm O Briain BL, defending Gda O’Leary (with Mr Hugh Hartnett SC), that he didn’t recall another youth on the football pitch phoning Mr Gaffney, but that this youth instead rang Ms Gaffney in a call that lasted only a few seconds before he heard a knock on the door from the other end of the line across the mobile’s loudspeaker.

He agreed with Mr David Keane SC, defending Gda Conlon, that his position as forward in an earlier football match would have meant he was busier than the team’s goal keeper and wasn’t so tired afterwards that he had to go to sleep.

Earlier, Ms Fidelma Gaffney denied under cross examination that she had only seen her son after the event, accepted what he had told her and positioned herself in his bedroom when making her statement. She denied when Mr Conor Devally SC, defending Gda Murtagh, suggested she had never been in the bedroom.

Ms Gaffney told Mr Devally that she had been in the bedroom at the foot of her son’s bed to see Gda Sean O’Leary lift the duvet and hit him in the face with a baton before another garda kicked him in the face.

Ms Gaffney told Mr Devally that her son had been asleep at the time as he always went to sleep after a football match, when counsel asked her if it was normal for a teenager to do so for several hours on top of a good night’s sleep when playing in goals for his team.

She denied when Mr Devally put it to her that her son was not so disciplined in his physical fitness and had been out the night before.

She agreed with Mr Devally that she had presumed gardaí calling to her home on February 17 had a right to enter and that she said she had been shown a piece of paper by one of the gardaí behind her.

She denied her behaviour was “volatile” as she approached her son’s bedroom or that she had launched into abusive language at gardaí.

Mr Hartnett that asked Ms Gaffney how she saw a garda standing behind his client in about one foot of space “in some way snaking” his leg around to kick Mr Gaffney in the face as he lay in bed.

Counsel suggested that this manoeuvre would have been impossible.

Ms Gaffney denied it was impossible, telling Mr Hartnett that she saw a garda behind Gda O’Leary kick her son in the face.

She agreed she had been a heroin user and that addiction to that substance can affect a person’s memory and cause forgetfulness, but stated she would never have forgotten something like this.

She agreed she had said in her evidence in chief that it had been about three minutes after she received a phone call from her son’s friend before gardaí arrived at the door.

She agreed she said the message had been to inform her son that gardaí were on the way but added that she didn’t wake him and can’t recall if she had rung the friend back to continue the conversation in the time it took officers to arrive.

She denied when Mr Hartnett suggested that her description of events did not happen, that her son had been awake and ready for gardaí when they arrived and that the details she had given were untrue.

Ms Gaffney accepted when Mr David Keane SC, defending Gda Conlon, put it two her that two gardaí, one of whom was his client, had called to her door the previous evening looking for Mr Gaffney and that she had let them in without any suggestion of a warrant.

Ms Gaffney told Mr Keane that she had let the one male and one female garda into her home because they were “nice”.

She agreed she gave evidence that she followed about four gardaí upstairs on February 17 and that she had said the assertion about having a warrant had come from someone behind her.

She agreed she said she had been shown a piece of paper briefly by the same person.

Mr Keane put it to her that she made no mention of this in her statements after the alleged incident and that this “pantomime” of someone flashing a piece of paper at her had crept into her evidence.

Ms Isobel Kennedy SC, defending Gda Delaney, put it to Ms Gaffney that her evidence about the position of the blonde haired female garda was different to her Garda Ombudsman statement.

Ms Gaffney said the blonde haired female garda had been in the bedroom doorway at the time.

The trial continues before Judge Desmond Hogan and a jury of six men and six women.