Former deputy State pathologist Dr Khalid Jaber made errors of judgment and offered opinions to the Central Criminal Court for which there was no supporting medical evidence, a Medical Council fitness-to-practise committee has determined.
Dr Jaber served as a deputy State pathologist between 2009 and 2013 but resigned amid reports of differences with then State pathologist Prof Marie Cassidy.
A fitness-to-practise inquiry last October heard a complaint was made to the Medical Council due to concerns that Dr Jaber’s work could result in people being wrongfully acquitted or convicted of serious crimes.
He faced three allegations of professional misconduct and poor professional performance concerning two postmortem reports and evidence he gave in two separate trials before the Central Criminal Court.
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One of the cases collapsed and a murder conviction was quashed in the other.
Another former deputy State pathologist, Dr Michael Curtis, lodged a complaint with the Medical Council, saying he felt Dr Jaber’s work was an “issue of public safety”.
Dr Curtis confirmed he was “worried” that people would be wrongly acquitted or convicted of serious crimes and said this was of particular concern to him, due to fact Dr Jaber was working in the Middle East, where capital punishment is practised.
On Tuesday, the fitness-to-practise committee, in a decision which took three hours to read into the record, found Dr Jaber had no pathological evidence to support or substantiate findings he gave to the Central Criminal Court that a man, Francis Greene, died from asphyxia in 2009.
Kevin Coughlan, of Avondale Drive, Greystones, Limerick, had his conviction for murdering Mr Greene quashed by the Court of Appeal in June 2015. He was later convicted of Mr Greene’s manslaughter at a retrial and sentenced to eight years.
The committee also found Dr Jaber gave unsubstantiated evidence in the trial of Michael Furlong for the murder of Patrick Connors in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, in April 2011. Dr Jaber found that blunt-force trauma contributed to Mr Connors’s death while refusing to accept the possibility that hypothermia could have been a factor.
The trial of Mr Furlong collapsed in 2013 after Prof Cassidy, the then State pathologist, wrote to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) highlighting concerns about Dr Jaber’s evidence and saying his postmortem report in the case had not been peer reviewed. The High Court subsequently prohibited the holding of a retrial.
The committee found that as well as poor professional performance, Dr Jaber’s behaviour, particularly in refusing to accept alternative scenarios put forward by superior experts had, when considered in its totality, amounted to professional misconduct.
Dr Jaber did not attend the inquiry or the incorporeal fitness-to-practise committee decision.
Ronan Kennedy SC, for the Medical Council, said his instructing solicitor had been in email contact with Dr Jaber on a number of occasions as late at Tuesday morning, advising him of the hearing and inviting him to attend. However, he noted there was no appearance for Dr Jaber.
The committee will now deliver its decision, along with a recommendation on any possible sanction, to the Medical Council.
