24/05/2011 - 18:22:49
A woman has gone on trial at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court for the manslaughter of another female in the city two years ago.
Michelle Brannigan (aged 36) of Hill Street, Dublin 1, has pleaded not guilty to unlawfully killing Tracey O’Brien (aged 31) at Parnell Square West on June 25, 2009.
In opening the case to the jury, Mr Dominic McGinn SC, prosecuting, said there would be evidence that Ms Brannigan had been an in-patient at the Rotunda Hospital and had given birth to a child prior to a “violent incident” at the hospital entrance on June 18, 2009.
Mr McGinn said the jury would hear that the accused knew Ms O’Brien and a fight broke out between them, before Ms Brannigan’s ex-partner, Wesley Ward, got involved.
He said there would be evidence that Ms O’Brien was first taken to the Mater Hospital and later transferred to Beaumont Hospital when a scan revealed she had suffered a skull fracture and bleeding inside her skull.
He said doctors there couldn’t operate on Ms O’Brien because of her condition and she was pronounced dead on June 25, 2009.
Mr McGinn (with Mr Maurice Coffey BL) said there would likely be no dispute that Ms O’Brien died as a result of the violence on June 18, 2009, but the jury would have to focus on how the violence progressed and what Ms Brannigan had intended when this violence broke out.
He said there may be a suggestion that Ms O’Brien had started the violence but the jury will have to assess that by looking at all the evidence and in particular CCTV footage of the incident.
He told the jury it would hear how Ms Brannigan told gardaí in interview that Mr Ward had caused the fatal injury.
A former Rotunda Hospital security supervisor, Mr Eric Cahill, told Mr McGinn that he went outside to the ambulance bay when he became aware of a fight between two ladies and saw Ms Brannigan sitting on top of another female, before she struck this woman with a closed fist to the left side of her face.
He agreed with Ms Isobel Kennedy SC, defending, that he had recalled Ms Brannigan being a patient at the hospital but wasn’t aware she had given birth by caesarean section a number of days previously and had had her staples removed just before the incident.
He said he saw Ms Brannigan “straddling” Ms O’Brien on top of her chest. Ms Kennedy put it to him that CCTV footage of the incident seemed to show the accused trying to get off the deceased on the ground.
Dr Michael Curtis, the Deputy State Pathologist, told Mr McGinn that he did a post-mortem examination on June 26, 2009 and noted she’d had a number of medical problems including liver disease, which made her “bruise more readily and extensively than a normal person”.
He noted bruising on her body during an external exam and bruising to the deeper tissues of her scalp during an internal exam.
He said he found an 8cm fracture on the inside of Ms O’Brien’s skull and that the severe bruising on the front of her brain was consistent with it being propelled forward as the back of her head struck a hard surface.
He said she had developed pneumonia in both lungs as a “mechanism of death” while in a coma and added that persons in a coma are “at particular risk” of developing the condition.
He said the head injury she had sustained was the “ultimate cause of death” but added that her liver disease “may well have been a feature in the severity and extensity of bruising to the brain.”
Ms Kennedy put it to him that CCTV footage of the incident “seems to show” Mr Ward pulling Ms O’Brien by the back of her hair to the ground.
Dr Curtis agreed that this may have caused the deceased’s head injury.
The trial continues before Judge Tony Hunt and a jury of eight men and four women.
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