The State Pathologist yesterday revised her opinion on the cause of death in a murder trial at the Central Criminal Court.
After being recalled to the witness box following contradictory evidence from a surgeon, Dr Marie Cassidy said: "I have been informed that the damage to the heart identified in post-mortem was caused by surgeons, and that the stab-wound to the back was to the lung alone." Therefore, she said, the cause of death was blood-loss from that lung.
Previously, the pathologist had told the court that she traced a wound from the victim's back, through his lung and into his heart.
Dr Cassidy was giving evidence in the trial of a Dublin man accused of a 41-year-old's murder. Mr Darren Rogers (21), of Elmdale Park, Ballyfermot, Dublin has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Mr Thomas Farrell of Cherry Orchard Avenue, also in Ballyfermot on November 27th, 2003.
Additionally, Dr Cassidy had admitted in her first testimony to the court, that there probably was no stitching to the lung, as it was not in her notes and was not obvious from photographs.
However, on Thursday, Dr Michael Tolan, of St James's Hospital in Dublin, assured the court that his surgical team sutured Mr Farrell's lung after he was rushed to hospital with a stab-wound on November 26th, 2003. Since his evidence, a page of Dr Cassidy's notes referring to lung-repair has been found: "My original hand-written notes indicate that the lung wound and one of the heart wounds had been sutured," she informed the jury yesterday.
When asked by Fergal Kavanagh SC, defending, if it was possible to tell the difference between wounds caused by a stabbing and those received in theatre, she replied: "In the course of my career, I have actually never come across incisions made by surgeons in the heart." She admitted that in using a probe to track what she thought was the one wound from entry to the body, through the lung and heart, she did not have to manoeuvre the probe to align everything.
She did agree, however, that the two incisions to the heart were slightly out of alignment, but said this did not rule out the possibility they were caused by the same implement at the same time.
She explained that the beating of the heart during a stabbing could lead to such a disparity. She agreed again that there was no evidence of stitching to the lung in the photographs, but added "you could see small holes around the big hole where needles had gone through", indicating the lung had indeed been stitched, but that the stitches had drifted away. The trial continues on Monday.