At the trial in Letterkenny of a detective sergeant accused of planting evidence, gardaí have been questioned about missing links in the chain of evidence.
Det Sgt John White (51) has pleaded not guilty to possession of a firearm for an unlawful purpose on May 22nd, 1998, the day before the search of a Traveller encampment in north Donegal.
Det Sgt Hugh Smith told the court that he rendered a double-barrelled sawn-off shotgun safe at the scene by removing two cartridges, one of which was spent.
"I am quite satisfied that the left barrel of the gun had been discharged," Sgt Smith said. He said he did not know who bagged and transported the gun to Letterkenny Garda station.
"In fairness, in hindsight it doesn't seem very professional."
Det Garda Joe Foley told the court he packed a shotgun and cartridges at 6pm that evening in Letterkenny, and handed them over to Det Garda Michael Jennings for transport to fingerprint expert Det Sgt Oliver Cloonan at Garda headquarters.
The court heard that Garda Jennings arrived at headquarters, where he met Det Garda Joseph Kinsella. "To facilitate Garda Jennings's return to Donegal, I was going to take the exhibits for Cloonan," Garda Kinsella said.
"I signed the C56 and at the same time Cloonan arrived."
C56 forms are used to record the chain of evidence for exhibits.
"There are no signatures on the document other than Det Garda Kinsella, who examined nothing," barrister Damien Crawford told the court.
Sgt Cloonan told the court that fingerprint tests he conducted were negative, and later that night he handed the shotgun and cartridges to Det Garda Patrick Whelan in the ballistics section.
Garda Whelan said he received one item, a double-barrelled shotgun, from Sgt Cloonan. A search of Garda headquarters for the cartridges several years later proved negative, he said.
The detective said the shotgun was in "very poor condition", but he was able to fire a blank test cartridge the following day. He did a "visual inspection" of the barrel, but did not swab the shotgun. "My finding was I found no evidence of a recent discharge."
Mr Crawford asked the detective if he had "watered down" his original report by stating that he visually inspected the firearm to determine that it was not recently discharged.
"I was actually expanding," Garda Whelan said. "I was asked to explain that, what I meant by that."
Two years later, Garda Whelan said he was asked to conduct a test to see if the gun could be discharged using a piece of string around the remaining part of the trigger.
He was able to fire the weapon by fixing it in a vice and using a length of string. He said he used a blank cartridge for the test, as a live round would be dangerous to those present, and could destroy evidence.
He said it would be "quite difficult" to fire the shotgun by placing it between two stones and using a string, as Det Garda Thomas Kilcoyne described seeing Sgt White do.
Det Sgt Fergus Traynor said he asked Garda Whelan to conduct the string-firing test in 2001 after Garda Kilcoyne alleged in a statement that he witnessed Sgt White test-fire a shotgun the night before the search of the Travellers encampment in May 1998.
"It was a decision made by Ballistics that they would try and simulate roughly what Garda Kilcoyne described," he said.
"They don't carry out tests willy-nilly, they do it in a controlled environment."
Mr Crawford said it "seemed highly improbable that the test could be carried out" in the manner described by Garda Kilcoyne. He said Sgt White felt there was "a very clear agenda, people were out to nail him".
Sgt Traynor told the court he had no agenda against Sgt White.
"His record in An Garda Síochána is well known to anyone who served in Dublin. He was responsible for saving many lives," he said.
The trial of Sgt White resumes next Tuesday.