Judge refers to 'scandalous neglect of duty' by gardai

Richie Barron investigation: Before 1am on October 14th, 1996, Richie Barron's body was found lying on the road 600 metres outside Raphoe, Co Donegal, shortly after he had been seen staggering drunkenly home, grasping at walls along the way.

Suspicions were raised that Mr Barron had been attacked, rather than having been a hit-and-run victim, because he had sustained serious head injuries and few wounds elsewhere.

His body was discovered by Lee Parker, who sought help at the nearby home of Hilary McBride, who, in turn, called the Letterkenny gardaí to handle the emergency.

On duty in Letterkenny, Garda Patrick Boyce tried to contact Garda Pádraig Mulligan in Raphoe, but with no success. When he contacted Lifford station, the crew of the Garda car refused to attend the accident, though they were just 10 minutes from the scene, because they wanted to take their meal-break.

Garda Mulligan could not be contacted in Raphoe because he had gone with an off-duty garda, John O'Dowd, to Lifford for a drink in Brannigan's pub at 12.30am.

"It is utterly wrong and disgraceful that a member of An Garda Síochána should be drinking alcohol in a public house whilst on duty," said the tribunal.

Garda Mulligan's absence from Raphoe at the time of the accident, "one of the most disturbing aspects of the case" in the words of Mr Justice Morris, did not become known for years because "of deliberate obstruction" by gardaí.

The situation was little better in Lifford, where they "simply decided not to answer this call. They deliberately deflected the call to continue with their meal-break. This was a scandalous neglect of duty."

Two gardaí from the station, James McDwyer and John Birney, eventually left Lifford at 1.20am, following another call from Ms McBride to Letterkenny station.

By then, a couple, Lee Dillon and Alison McBride, had used "the green man" at Raphoe Garda station to report Mr Barron's accident to Letterkenny, though no record was kept of this.

"A recording of only one call from Ms Hilary McBride gave a false impression of a prompt response that was totally at variance with the facts," said Mr Justice Morris.

Garda Boyce in Letterkenny had tried to "hide records from his superiors of the second and third calls, which obviously indicated anxiety on the part of the civilians present concerning the failure of the gardaí to respond within a reasonable time".

When the gardaí finally got to the scene they failed to investigate properly, preserve evidence, or take proper statements from witnesses - though they quickly became convinced that Mr Barron's death was not an accident. Garda Mulligan subsequently claimed that his notebook had gone missing when he was asked to produce it by the internal investigation team led by Kevin Carty, who is now an assistant commissioner.

However, the tribunal believes he failed to produce it "because there were details in it which would cause him embarrassment or because there was so little detail in it that he was embarrassed to produce it".

Rumours quickly spread about Mr Barron's death, bringing local nightclub bouncer Frank McBrearty jnr and Mark McConnell to the attention of gardaí - particularly because Mr McConnell had been involved in a row with the dead man earlier in the evening. Garda suspicions about Mr McConnell may have been initially understandable, but the decision to pursue Mr McBrearty jnr made no sense, according to the second volume of the Morris tribunal report.

"The statements showed that he spent the night working in his father's public house and disco premises . . . had virtually no possibility to absent himself from the premises for long enough to carry out the assault on Mr Barron.

"Notwithstanding all of this evidence, the gardaí were consumed by the notion that Mr McBrearty was a guilty party," the tribunal said yesterday.

Mr McConnell had offered contradictory statements that raised questions over his whereabouts at the time of the death. However, he had offered to co-operate.

"The very least he was entitled to was an opportunity to account for the perceived conflicts." While the gardaí were entitled to "harbour some suspicions" about Mr McConnell, they were not entitled to assume his guilt. "This assumption arose because members of the incident room team were emotionally consumed by the presumption of his guilt," said the Morris report.

In late November 1996, Robert Noel McBride was coerced into being "a false witness" for the gardaí, when he claimed he had seen the two men returning to the nightclub after 1am. However, the statement was fraudulent. "The circumstances in which it was taken by the members of the gardaí involved, were grossly improper and constituted grave misconduct."

Furthermore, Mr McBride's statement was extracted from him only after Sgt Martin Moylan, Garda O'Dowd and Garda Philip Collins "coerced him to make a statement to the effect that he was in Raphoe on the night in question, that he intended to carry out a robbery at the technical school, that this brought Mr McBride to a point adjacent to the car-park and that while there, he observed the two suspects coming down from the direction where Mr Barron died".

Garda Martin Leonard, the custody officer, was supposed to protect the prisoner. "He did nothing to effect this. Instead, he was content that a prisoner should be oppressed."