A MAN has gone on trial at the Central Criminal Court accused of murdering his former girlfriend’s baby at their home in Co Wexford seven years ago.
Philip Doyle (34), of Tinakilly, Aughrim, Co Wicklow, has pleaded not guilty to murdering Ross Murphy at Creagh Demesne, Gorey, on April 5th, 2005.
The jury was told the cause of death of the 3½-month-old was head trauma, but the prosecution could not prove the mechanism by which it was caused.
Opening the trial, Tom O’Connell SC, prosecuting, told the court it was the State’s case the trauma that caused death was inflicted two days before the infant died at Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin on April 5th, 2005. He said the child developed pneumonia in hospital, hastening his death.
Mr O’Connell told the jury the death was not accidental and that they would hear evidence the injuries were consistent with shaken baby syndrome. He said there were four points of bruising to the head and it was the prosecution’s case that this was not consistent with one incident of trauma.
Mr O’Connell said State Pathologist Prof Marie Cassidy, who conducted a postmortem on the child’s body on April 6th, 2005, found he died after head trauma and would not have recovered.
He also said the pathologist found other injuries to the body and that such damage was “not expected to occur in a not yet mobile child”.
The court heard the baby’s mother, Leona Murphy, was 7½ months pregnant when she started seeing Mr Doyle.
Mr O’Connell told the jury the baby was born in December 2004 and the three took up living together at Creagh Demesne in mid-January 2005. Mr Doyle asked Ms Murphy if he could be named as the father on the baby’s birth certificate but she refused to do this, the court was told.
Mr O’Connell said Ross Murphy was “for all intents and purposes a normal, healthy child” and that a number of witnesses would give evidence in relation to this.
The prosecution says Mr Doyle gave different accounts of what happened to the baby and that he lied to medics about what happened before Ross became ill and that the accused did not say he was in the house on his own with the infant at the time of the incident.
The court was told there was a previous incident on the evening of March 31st, 2005, when Mr Doyle took the baby upstairs and put him in his cot. He went up three times and then called Ms Murphy to come upstairs and when she picked him up he was lifeless, but he was revived with cold water.
The local doctor was contacted and saw the baby later that night, and suggested he be taken to Wexford General Hospital. The infant remained for four days until being discharged on the afternoon of April 3rd, 2005.
At 6pm on the evening the baby returned home from hospital, Ms Murphy went out for a DVD when a second incident happened, the court was told.
Mr O’Connell said that in the following half hour, events led to the subsequent death of the baby, and a series of accounts were given by Mr Doyle. Mr O’Connell said no account other than that the injuries were self-inflicted was given by the accused.
Three weeks later he said Mr Doyle changed his story, saying what occurred was accidental. He told gardaí that he had picked up the child and tripped on a mat and tried to turn sideways as he fell to save the baby.
Originally Mr Doyle had denied he was on his own with the child but in a sixth Garda interview he gave a new version of events when presented with mobile phone evidence of Ms Murphy having been out, the court heard.
The trial, expected to last up to five weeks, continues before a jury of seven men and five women and is presided over by Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy.