THE JURY is expected to start its deliberations today at the end of the trial of three gardaí stationed in Waterford charged with assault causing harm to a civilian during an arrest.
A fourth garda is charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice by diverting a CCTV camera while his colleagues committed the alleged assault.
Judge Leonie Reynolds is expected to finish her charge to the five men and seven women at Waterford Circuit Criminal Court in the case of Garda Daniel Hickey, Sgt Alan Kissane, Sgt Martha McEnery and Garda John Burke.
Garda Hickey, Sgt Kissane and Sgt McEnery all deny assault causing harm to Anthony Holness while trying to arrest him for a public order offence at New Street in Waterford at about 3am on January 29th, 2010.
Garda Burke denies acting with intent to impede the apprehension or prosecution of another and of acting in a manner tending and intended to pervert the course of justice. The State alleges he deliberately switched a CCTV camera away from the arrest.
Yesterday the jury heard closing arguments from counsel Mary Rose Gearty SC for Sgt Kissane, who said CCTV footage seen by the jury clearly showed most of the punching done to Mr Holness had happened prior to the arrival of Sgt Kissane.
She said it was also clear from the footage from the way Sgt Kissane is looking that he could not possibly have been the person responsible for kicking Mr Holness in the head, as he was trying to put handcuffs on him.
She told the jury they had watched the footage and had seen a graze on the side of Mr Holness’s head, but it was obvious that somebody other than Sgt Kissane had kicked him and punched him repeatedly.
Counsel Iseult O’Malley SC, for Sgt McEnery, said it would be wrong for the jury to convict her client as it would involve them having to make a huge leap from the evidence that the State had presented against Sgt McEnery.
She said prosecution counsel, Michael Delaney SC, had invited the jury to start from the premise that because Sgt McEnery had not seen Mr Holness being kicked in the head that she must automatically be lying about what she saw happen.
And the State’s case then required the jury to make an impossible leap from that premise to one that says that if she lied about that, then she must also be lying about her own involvement in the incident when she denied assaulting Mr Holness.
She said that if a man gets drunk and urinates on the street, he will be apprehended by gardaí, and if he gets aggressive and curses gardaí and won’t give his name, he will be arrested, and if he resists arrests, he will be handcuffed, she said. “If you convict Martha McEnery of assault for this, then gardaí are going to have to review how they deal with drunk and aggressive people from now on,” she told the jury.
Barrister for Garda Burke, Elaine Morgan, said there was a contradiction in the State’s case against her client: it was due only to his operation of the CCTV camera that charges could have been brought against the two sergeants.
The State alleged he had deliberately twice switched the CCTV camera away from the incident to conceal the criminal actions being committed by his three colleagues when it is alleged they assaulted Mr Holness.
It was due to Garda Burke’s operation of the CCTV camera that a total of nine punches to the back of Mr Holness’s head, two to three kicks to his body, one stamping on him and one punch to his side were captured on the footage, she said.
The case continues today.