Catherine Nevin has lost the appeal against her conviction for murdering her husband, but she is now likely to face further legal actions, writes Conor Lally.
Just after 10 a.m. yesterday, the convicted murderer Catherine Nevin lost any immediate hope she might have had of regaining her liberty when the Court of Criminal Appeal ruled her murder conviction was sound.
If the family of her late husband Tom get their way, Nevin's freedom is not the only thing she will be relieved of. When Tom's brothers and sisters - Patrick, William, Mary, Nora, Margaret, Noel and Sean - commemorate his death next Wednesday, on the seventh anniversary of his passing, they will be mindful of the unfinished business that lies ahead.
When Tom Nevin was murdered at his pub, Jack White's Inn near Brittas Bay, Co Wicklow, in March 1996, he left behind no will. It meant all his assets went to his wife, Catherine. She already owned half of Jack White's Inn and was joint owner of two houses the couple owned in Dublin. With his passing she became a very wealthy woman. Jack White's has since been sold. It fetched £620,000 (€787,000) in 1997, with half the proceeds going to Tom Nevin's estate and the other half into Catherine Nevin's pocket.
But the two houses the Nevins owned would now be worth close to €1 million combined. Ironically, one of the properties is just a short distance from Mountjoy Prison, where Catherine Nevin is serving her life sentence.
Tom Nevin's siblings have always believed their sister-in-law killed Tom. "They are just quiet country people who have been devastated by all of this," was how one source close to the family put it yesterday. "It was particularly hard because of all the personal allegations that were made about him during the trial."
In the witness box, Catherine Nevin accused her husband of being a drunk, a wife-beater and a member of the IRA.
The Nevins are now determined that Catherine, dubbed the Black Widow by the media, will have no wealth to enjoy when she eventually emerges from prison. In this, they are continuing the action started by their late mother, Nora Nevin.
When Tom Nevin was killed, his mother began legal action against his widow. It was a two-pronged attack on the assets of the woman she was convinced had organised Tom's murder. It was agreed that Tom's estate would be frozen until the criminal charges against Catherine Nevin were disposed of one way or the other. With this week's ruling, Nora Nevin's plan kicks back into action.
The first part is to appeal to the High Court for an order that would effectively disinherit Catherine Nevin from her husband's estate. That element will be based on the legal principle that a party should not benefit from the death of another if they were responsible for that death. It would mean Tom Nevin's estate could then be divided as his late mother wished: equally among his seven siblings.
In the second element, the Nevin siblings will initiate a civil action, aimed at receiving compensation from Catherine Nevin for killing their brother. If their actions are successful, she would have no wealth to speak of.
The High Court action is expected to begin before the end of this year. It is not known whether Catherine Nevin will defend the action. Given her legal status following her failed appeal, that she unquestionably organised her husband's murder, it would be difficult to see any court ruling in her favour. The extent of the damages awarded to the Nevin siblings would be at the discretion of a judge, however.
Seven years after the murder, many locals are still shocked by the events surrounding the murder of the popular publican. One regular in Jack White's Inn who spoke to The Irish Times yesterday said that immediately after the murder he was flabbergasted.
"There had always been rumours about her having affairs and whatever, but any time the two of them were there together and she was serving you food or doing other jobs around the place, she'd be calling him 'love' and 'chicken'. And then when it all came out that she had hired people to kill him and had tried before to hire three others to do the same thing I just couldn't believe it. I would never have known from her carry-on that she was capable of something like that or that that was the kind of situation they were in. It was amazing stuff."
When contacted yesterday, the current owner of the pub, Carlow chef John Kennedy, said he preferred not to comment. "Anytime I say something it is just twisted [by the media\]. I'd prefer to just leave it at that," he said.
At the time of her trial in 2000, the court was told Catherine Nevin had hired a gang to kill her husband. She planned the murder to make it look like part of a botched robbery. She claimed the thieves were after the takings from the pub and that she had been threatened by the raiders. She claimed her husband's involvement with the IRA might have been linked to the robbery. The jury did not believe her and she was sentenced to life imprisonment. Gardaí said Tom Nevin was never suspected of paramilitary involvement.
Last month, Nevin appealed, on 20 grounds, her conviction for murdering her husband. As part of the same appeal she also challenged her conviction for attempting to solicit three other parties to kill Tom at various times in the decade before he died.
Her appeal can be divided into three main arguments.
Firstly, she contended there was no way she could have got a fair trial because of adverse media coverage after the murder and during two aborted trials before she was finally convicted. Secondly, her legal team argued separate trials should have taken place to deal with the murder charge and three soliciting charges. They said there was a considerable amount of evidence in the murder trial that was largely irrelevant to the solicitation charges. Finally, she argued the judge's charge to the jury just before her conviction was unfair to her.
Justice Geoghegan, sitting with Justice Quirke and Justice Peart simply told the court yesterday the appeal had been dismissed. He added that application for a further appeal was being refused. The delivery took just a few seconds. He said Judge Carroll had handled the case in a "calm and resolute" way and Nevin had received an "exceptionally fair trial in very difficult circumstances".