The State Pathologist, Dr John Harbison, has told a murder trial he found 160 to 180 lead pellets lodged in the skull of the deceased, who had been shot at "virtual contact range" by a shotgun.
The head was "shattered at the back" and the skull "was very badly fragmented by the discharge of the shot", he told a jury in the Central Criminal Court yesterday. Mr Joseph Delaney (54), formerly of La Rochelle, Naas, Co Kildare, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Mark Dwyer (23) on or about December 14th, 1996. He has also pleaded not guilty to falsely imprisoning Mr Dwyer and detaining him against his will at Foster Terrace, Ballybough, Dublin, on December 14th, 1996.
Dr Harbison said he found multiple injuries on the deceased's back, arms and chest, where Mr Dwyer had suffered a "severe beating". The principal injury was an entrance wound to the left side of the back of the head, but there was no exit wound and the face was intact.
The "shattering of the brain was the cause of death but the heart would have gone on beating for some minutes and caused blood to trickle down" into the lungs, he said. There were traces of methadone in the blood. Some of the bruising on the back could have been inflicted by an implement "similar" to a baton found at the Mr Delaney's home.
Dr Harbison said Mr Dwyer's hands were bound with flex tied into hoops resembling cufflinks and his head was covered in two pillowcases, one inside the other. They were saturated with blood, he said. He looked for holes in the pillowcases because he wanted to know if they were placed over the head before or after he was shot, and found two small holes.
He said the cause of death was a "laceration of the brain due to a single shotgun wound in the back of the head fired at virtual contact range but not quite".
The case before Mr Justice Quirke resumes today.