Four gardaí in court on assault charges
Updated: 15:42, Tuesday, 19 October 2010
Four gardaí have gone on trial charged with assault and false imprisonment of a teenager after forcibly entering his home as trespassers.
Four gardaí have gone on trial charged with assaulting a teenager after forcibly entering his home as trespassers.
Three of the four are also charged with false imprisonment.
The four, Sean O'Leary, Eoin Murtagh, Alan Conlon and Claire Delaney, who were stationed at Kilmainham and Kevin Street, have denied entering a flat at Basin Street Upper and assaulting Owen Gaffney on 17 February 2008.
Opening the case for the prosecution, Senior Counsel Tom O'Connell told the jury the case was in essence about gardaí acting in an unlawful way.
He said the four were accused of entering the 17-year-old victim's flat without a warrant and beating him while his mother was locked in a bathroom.
Three of the gardaí - Garda Murtagh, Garda Conlon and Garda Delaney - have denied the false imprisonment of the victim's mother Fildema Gaffney.
The court was told that all four accused, in the company of other gardaí, acted together in a pre-arranged plan and went to the home of Fidelma and Owen Gaffney at Upper Basin Street in Dublin.
He said without a warrant they locked Mrs Gaffney in a bathroom and the door was held closed for over five minutes.
The four accused went to a bedroom where Owen Gaffney was sleeping having played in a football match earlier that day. He was beaten with a baton, kicked and punched and suffered injury as a result.
He said a police officer can only enter a home if he has a warrant or reasonable suspicion that a person on those premises has committed a serious, arrestable offence.
In this case there was neither a warrant nor was there an arrest, he said.
Mr O'Connell said gardaí appeared in significant numbers, about nine in all, and Mrs Gaffney asked if they had a warrant.
A piece of paper was waved at her by Claire Delaney.
Opening statement
The jury was told that it would hear evidence from other gardaí who were with the four accused on the day.
Two student gardaí were in the patrol cars when they arrived at the Basin Street flats.
One of the students will tell the court that Garda Eoin Murtagh asked her for an antiseptic wipe to clean blood off his knuckles and Garda Sean O'Leary asked for a wipe to clean blood off his baton.
The victim's mother will tell the court that she was told by gardaí that they had a warrant.
She will also say gardaí entered her son's bedroom, lifted up the duvet and hit him on the head. She was then grabbed by the neck and pushed into the bathroom.
Owen Gaffney will say that he woke to find Garda O'Leary in his bedroom. He was hit with a baton and his head was pushed against the bed post. He saw his mother being pushed from the room.
A friend of the victim telephoned Fidelma Gaffney before she opened the door to gardaí, she left the phone down to answer the door and the friend recorded the sounds from the flat. He later gave the phone to gardaí but saved the recording onto a memory stick, the court was told.
The jury was also told that a garda witness will say the previous evening Garda Murtagh went to assist two uniformed gardaí who were in an altercation.
Garda Conlon believed Owen Gaffney had been involved in the altercation.
The court will also hear evidence that DNA from the victim was retrieved from blood samples found on the baton of one of the gardaí.
The court will hear medical evidence of injuries sustained by Owen Gaffney. He was taken to James' Hospital and had suffered bruising to his head, chest and arms and a cut lip and swollen nose.
All four gardaí deny the charges.
The trial continues before Judge Desmond Hogan at the Circuit Criminal Court
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