High Court cancels registration of former deputy State pathologist for professional misconduct
Dr Khalid Jaber was last February found by a Medical Council Fitness to Practise Committee guilty of professional misconduct relating to his postmortem findings in two cases. File picture: Collins Courts
A former deputy State pathologist who was found guilty of professional misconduct over his postmortem findings in two criminal cases has had his registration cancelled by the High Court.
High Court president Mr Justice David Barniville confirmed a decision of the Irish Medical Council to impose the most severe sanction and cancel the registration of Dr Khalid Jaber.
The judge also referred to “bizarre communication” indicated in the court papers from Dr Khalid Jaber who now lives in the Middle East in which the judge said the doctor made it clear he had no intention of participating, “other than from the sidelines” with grenades to attack the Irish Medical Council, the DPP and former colleagues.
The former deputy State pathologist was last February found by a Medical Council Fitness to Practise Committee guilty of professional misconduct relating to his postmortem findings in two cases.
The allegations against Dr Jaber related to postmortem findings and related evidence that the Saudi-born pathologist gave to two cases before the Central Criminal Court – one of which collapsed and the other where a murder conviction was quashed both due to the pathologist’s testimony.
The Council Fitness to Practise Committee ruled that certain allegations of both professional misconduct and poor professional performance made against Khalid Jaber were proven following a medical inquiry which was held over six days between October 2024 and January 2025.
Dr Jaber served as deputy State pathologist between 2009 and 2013 when he resigned in controversial circumstances amid reports of major disagreements with the then chief State pathologist, Marie Cassidy.
In the High Court on Monday, Sinead Taaffe of Fieldfisher solicitors for the Medical Council said the Council Fitness to Practise Committee was aware that the removal from the register is the most serious sanction. She said it did not consider Mr Jaber, aged 66, had any insight into his own conduct and he regarded himself the victim.
The inquiry arose following a complaint to the Medical Council in August 2015.
The pathologist was accused of giving evidence in the trial of Michael Furlong for the murder of his friend, Patrick Connors, aged 37, in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, in April 2011 that blunt force trauma which caused fractures of the deceased’s jaw had contributed to his death.
The committee, the High Court heard, was satisfied there was no pathological evidence to justify such a finding.
The trial of Mr Furlong collapsed in 2013 following the dramatic intervention of Prof. Cassidy when she notified the DPP of her concerns about Dr Jaber’s evidence and the fact that his postmortem report in the case had not been peer reviewed.
The High Court subsequently prohibited the holding of a retrial.
Separately, the Fitness to Practise Committee found there was no pathological evidence to justify Dr Jaber’s finding in a postmortem report that the death of Francis Greene, aged 48, at Steamboat Quay in Limerick in November 2009 was due to asphyxia and the related evidence he subsequently provided in court.
The victim’s badly decomposed body had been immersed in water for two months before being discovered.
Gardaí believed Mr Greene had been forced into the River Shannon and died by drowning but Dr Jaber’s evidence suggested he had been strangled before he ended up in the water.
Kevin Coughlan of Avondale Drive, Greystones, Limerick, had his conviction for the murder of Mr Greene quashed by the Court of Appeal in June 2015. However, he was subsequently convicted of Mr Greene’s manslaughter at a retrial and sentenced to eight years in prison.
The Fitness to Practise Committee said it was “totally inappropriate and unjustifiable” for Dr Jaber to have made such “a definitive and unequivocal” finding about the cause of death in “the complete absence” of any supporting evidence.
It also ruled that he had failed to demonstrate he appreciated the fundamental difference between bite marks and tooth indentations as well as incorrectly equating hanging with strangulation in his evidence.
On Monday, costs were also awarded to the Irish Medical Council in the High Court.
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