In the Catherine Nevin murder trial, Miss Justice Carroll has told the jury that they are the sole judges of fact in this case and nothing that she says, or that the lawyers have said, in relation to the facts is binding on them.
Her function in charging the jury is to guide them on the applicable law, and summarise the evidence. The jury has to consider four separate charges. Until now in this trial, Miss Justice Carroll has been the referee ensuring the trial was run fairly. Today, she told them that on the soliciting charges they could not use one to bolster another. “I want you to be sure”, she told them “that when you apply your minds to all the facts that you have accepted as true, that you can come to the conclusion that to treat the matter as pure co-incidence would be an affront to common sense”.
Miss Justice Carroll begun her charge to the jury this afternoon after Defence counsel Patrick McEntee completed a closing speech that took him three days to deliver. As he concluded his closing speech, defence Counsel Patrick McEntee said that if Tom Nevin had been killed by a hired assassin as the prosecution claimed, he would have been shot in the head and shot more than once. Mr. Nevin was shot in the side at close range. Mr. McEntee also attacked the credibility of Donnacha Long, the carpet fitter who claimed that in the week before the murder Mrs. Nevin told him she hated her husband and was going to do him or have him done.
