Retired garda 'used' by fellow officer, tribunal told
A retired Sligo garda officer who was prosecuted for submitting false certificates of loss of earnings for a witness said today he committed the crime to “oblige” another officer.
Former Garda John Nicholson told the Morris Tribunal into Garda corruption in Donegal he had ended up going against everything he believed in because he was used by Detective Sergeant John White.
He told the tribunal he was prosecuted in the district court for submitting false certificates for Bernard Conlon, who gave evidence against Frank McBrearty Senior in a liquor licensing case, because of “one man and one man only and that was Det Sgt White”.
When asked by Paul McDermott, Senior Counsel for the tribunal, how he felt he had been used, he said: “As a messenger boy”.
“I believed what I was doing, that I was doing it in good faith, totally obliging Sergeant White.”
Bernard Conlon was told to contact Mr Nicholson by Det Sgt White to get his expenses paid, Mr Nicholson told the tribunal.
Mr Conlon refused to get a certificate from his employer and said he would not go back to court to give evidence if Garda Nicholson and Sergeant White could not organise to have his expenses paid.
Mr Nicholson told the tribunal that Det Sgt White told him to get a receipt for IR£40 for loss of wages for Mr Conlon (who was not formally employed and did not qualify for that amount), but denied that Sgt White suggested he did anything illegal.
“It was emphasised to me that he (Conlon) was such an important witness and he couldn’t afford to lose him,” he said.
When Mr McDermott asked him: “What was so important about this case?” he replied: “It was certainly important to Sgt White.”
“It wasn’t obliging Bernard Conlon I was, it was obliging Sergeant White.”
Mr Nicholson said he was “honoured to do it” at the time.
But he denied there was a bigger reason for going outside the law in order to get the receipts.
Mr Nicholson said he had met Det Sgt White for the first time in June of 1997 when he went up to Donegal to arrest Mark McConnell, but that he had heard of him before then.
“I knew he worked at the highest level with the garda, with commissioners, I knew he had detected very very serious crime in the State and I knew he worked in the murder squad.”
Following the meeting, Sgt White asked him to pass on a message to Bernard Conlon that he was needed in Raphoe, which Mr Nicholson did, but did not know what the message related to, he told the tribunal.
