Defence and prosecution address court in Cork trial of father accused of cruelty to baby daughter

The prosecution claimed today that the circumstantial evidence in the case of cruelty to a six-month-old girl pointed inescapably to the infant’s 31-year-old father but the defence said there was a hole in the middle of the prosecution in the shape of the baby’s absent mother.

Prosecution senior counsel Jane Hyland said there was only one explanation for what happened to the baby and this was that she was shaken by her father, the accused before the court.

“On that Monday morning, January 4, 2021, she was alert, everything was fine, and something happened on that morning to that baby when only she and the accused were in the vicinity, when there was vomiting and there was a noise from the back of her throat. There was concern at CUH with brain dysfunction and issues with sight.

“What happened in that time? What happened to make an ostensibly healthy baby, what rendered her in a condition that the next day she was measuring nine on the Glasgow coma scale? A serious brain injury. If she dropped one more point on the scale she would have required oxygen to help her breath. 

"Only she and (the accused) were together… The state’s case is that serious harm was caused to baby (name) on January 4, 2021.”

Consider

Ms Hyland asked the jury to consider who else could have caused the serious harm to the six-month-old. And she said that the accused in his evidence in this trial appeared to be putting two people - his then partner (the mother of the baby) and the maternal grandmother - in the frame.

But Ms Hyland asked if the maternal grandmother seemed like the kind of person who would shake the baby and cause these injuries, and she said that by the accused man’s own interview with gardaí he said he was certain that his then partner could not have done it.

“If you go through the evidence piece by piece, each of these contenders falls away, leaving one person, (the accused),” Ms Hyland said.

She also highlighted the evidence of the social worker who testified that the accused told her that he shook the baby twice when she cried. The accused said he lied in the hope that such an ission would help him and his then partner to get their baby back when the matter was being investigated by Tusla and gardaí.

Ray Boland defence senior counsel said that the prosecution was saying that the child’s mother and maternal grandmother did not seem like the kind of people who would shake the baby and cause injuries. He said the same could be said of the defendant, a young man with no previous convictions of any kind.

Alleging

Mr Boland said the prosecution was alleging that the baby was perfectly healthy on the morning of January 4, 2021, and that they should then look at the period when the defendant was alone with the baby that day. 

But he argued: “Where is the medical evidence? Where is the evidence about how long it would take for a bleed to come on the brain after being shaken? Where is the evidence of that? There is none.” 

Mr Boland said that a huge missing piece in the prosecution case is the absence of the defendant’s then partner and mother of the baby. 

“It is a huge (mother’s name)-shaped hole in the case. Does (mother's name) look like a person who would shake a baby? We don’t know. And we don’t know why the DPP did not bring her.” Mr Boland suggested that the jury might well ask, “what kind of an eejit would it to it if did not do it?” 

In answering that, he said it was not to disrespect his client that he said of him: “This particular eejit.” 

He explained that it was the ission of a young man out of his depth among professional people and that he understood from what doctors, social workers and older parties were saying, that if he did not make some kind of ission – even though untrue – he and his then partner would not get their daughter back.

Mr Boland said the jury could not convict the accused on any charge beyond reasonable doubt and that they should acquit him on all counts.

Judge Dermot Sheehan will continue his address to the seven women and five men of the jury before they commence their deliberations at Cork Circuit Criminal Court, on whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty to charges of assault causing harm, assault causing serious harm and cruelty to his daughter – on various dates from November 25, 2020, to January 2021, when she was around six months old.