Barr Tribunal
Olivia Kelly
Attention at the Barr tribunal today will focus on whether gardaí due to appear as witnesses will do so without legal representation.
Mr Tom Murphy, the solicitor representing 36 gardaí involved in the tribunal, withdrew from the proceedings on Wednesday after Mr Justice Barr said he would not reconsider remarks made in relation to the possibility of a fifth bullet having been fired by a local garda at the Abbeylara shooting of Mr John Carthy.
Mr Murphy told Mr Justice Barr on Wednesday morning he was withdrawing for the day to consider his position. However he did not return to the tribunal yesterday.
In December senior counsel for the gardaí, Mr John Rogers, walked out of the tribunal after he clashed with Mr Justice Barr over the chairman's remarks about the possible fifth bullet and the general manner in which the inquiry was being conducted.
Two of the gardaí due to give evidence today, Sgt Daniel Monahan and Det Garda John Gibbons, are on the list of the 36 gardaí represented by Mr Murphy and Mr Rogers.
The tribunal continued hearing evidence yesterday in the absence of the legal team of the 36 gardaí. Counsel for the Garda Commissioner, Mr Diarmuid McGuinness, continues to attend proceedings.
Prof Jack Philips, consultant neurosurgeon at Beaumont Hospital in Dublin, told the tribunal Mr Carthy would have been in a frenzied and altered state of mind to continue walking upright after he was shot.
Mr Carthy was shot four times by gardaí before he died outside his home in Abbeylara, Co Longford, in April 2000.
The first two shots, which hit Mr Carthy in the left thigh, would have caused a "normal person" in a normal state of mind to withdraw their leg and stumble, Prof Philips said.
The third bullet, passing through the small of Mr Carthy's back and hitting his pelvis before exiting his body, would have been "a severely noxious and painful stimulus", he said. "A normal person would have fallen instantly, I believe."
Prof Philips said that given the Garda evidence that Mr Carthy continued to walk upright until hit by the fourth shot, he must conclude that Mr Carthy was in an altered state of mind. "My interpretation is that this man's agitated brain overrided the painful stimulus."
Counsel for the Carthy family, Mr Michael O'Higgins, said Prof Philips was basing his theory that Mr Carthy was in an altered state of mind on the Garda evidence that he continued to walk upright after he had been shot. It had not yet been determined by the tribunal chairman whether this was actually the case.
"If the account on which you have based your conclusion is impugned, your conclusion is impugned," suggested Mr O'Higgins.