A former Davis Cup tennis player and a university student who assaulted a librarian, leaving him with serious head and facial injuries, are to be sentenced on November 8th by Judge Donagh McDonagh at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.
Dermot Cooper (29), Fosterbrook, Stillorgan, Dublin, and Stephen Nugent (24), St Werburgh's, Swords, Co Dublin,pleaded guilty to assault causing harm to Barry Duggan on April 13th, 2003, on day five of their trial last June, after initially denying charges of assault causing him serious harm.
After recounting evidence from the trial, Sgt John Doyle told the court yesterday that Mr Duggan was taken to St James's Hospital, where he was found to have severe brain and head injuries. He also had a broken jaw and eye socket and there were fractures to his head and skull. He was not discharged from hospital until May 8th, 2003, having been in an induced coma for a number of days.
He had to regularly attend his doctor afterwards and was under the continued care of a speech therapist, an occupational therapist and a physiotherapist until October 23rd, 2003.
Sgt Doyle said neither Nugent nor Cooper had any previous convictions and neither had come to Garda attention since.
Sgt Doyle agreed with Nugent's senior counsel, Patrick Gageby, that the Evening Herald had carried front-page photographs of CCTV footage of the incident after Cooper and Nugent were charged in March 2004, highlighting an individual with an arm raised, claiming it to be that of one of the assailants. He accepted this image showed Mr Duggan hitting Sean Cooper, a brother of Dermot Cooper, and confirmed the DPP had later issued proceedings against the paper for contempt of court.
He further agreed with Mr Gageby that an orthopaedic surgeon indicated during the trial there was a high probability that Mr Duggan was seriously injured when he fell, hitting his head off the ground.
Sgt Doyle agreed with Cooper's senior counsel, Michael O'Higgins, that his client's first involvement was an attempt to break up the altercation between Nugent and Mr Duggan. He accepted the manner in which the Evening Herald "built up the case" against his client, describing it as a "savage attack", would have been very upsetting for Cooper.
Mr Gageby said Nugent had "been catapulted to the front pages" with inaccurate reporting of the event. "He has gone from being a relatively well-known tennis player to a well-known condemned thug".
Mr Gageby told Judge McDonagh that civil proceedings taken by Mr Duggan against both Nugent and Cooper had been settled, although no figure was discussed in court.
Mr O'Higgins asked Judge McDonagh to accept evidence that Cooper was a university student who paid for his own education by working in a bar, sometimes six nights a week.
Mr O'Higgins said Cooper also found coverage in the media difficult and said it was his belief that certain papers used the fact that he came from a respectable background to "beat him about the head" and that they had "hung, drawn and quartered" his client.
Judge McDonagh inquired as to the height of both men and, after noting that Cooper was 6ft 1in and Nugent was 5ft 10in, asked how Mr Duggan at 5ft 6in posed such a threat to a group of three young men. Mr O'Higgins replied that it was late at night and the men would not have had the opportunity to compute such information. He had accepted on behalf of his client they had misjudged the situation.
Judge McDonagh said he needed time to consider the matter and remanded both Cooper and Nugent on continuing bail until November 8th.