Jason Corbett’s family was subjected over the eight-day hearing to the traducing of his character. Various statements were made that portrayed him as a controlling, violent bully. Friends of Molly Martens provided testimony which echoed her portrayal of Jason Corbett. Notably, the court was told that four of the five statements provided by friends were adjusted later by the deponents, claiming that their original words were not properly recorded. 

It was also established that among the 50 or so statements gathered by the police, nobody else made any suggestion of shoddy or inaccurate recording of their words.

The element of the eight-day hearing that was surreal was that which touched on the death of Jason Corbett’s first wife, Mags Fitzpatrick. She died in Limerick in 2006, when the younger of her two children was just weeks old. 

Her death was tragic but uncontroversial. She had a history of asthma and on the night of her death she got an attack. Jason woke Mags’ sister, Catherine, who lived with the couple, and they rang for an ambulance. Jason drove his wife to meet the ambulance but despite their best efforts, she died. 

Medical tragedy

Thus, a young mother was the victim of a medical, most likely unavoidable, tragedy and her husband was left to care for the baby Sarah and two-year-old Jack.

Seventeen years later that tragedy was dragged through the hearing in North Carolina. Molly Martens had claimed that she had fears that Jason had murdered his first wife, so an investigation of sorts was opened up. If it was established that a homicide had occurred in Ireland all those years ago, it could go towards mitigation of the actions of Molly Martens and her father.

The investigation involved four medical experts examining the autopsy report on Mags Fitzpatrick. All agreed that she had not died due to an asthma attack. For the defence, this opened up prairies of possibility. 

If she didn’t die by the stated cause, what happened? Was there a cover-up? Was it down to the standard of medicine in Ireland not being up to American standards? Could she have actually been murdered?

The two defence experts told the hearing that homicide by manual strangulation had been “possible”. One of them went as far as to say it was “likely”. This is the kind of stuff that one might associate with a court in a banana republic where the outcome is predetermined. 

The only evidence presented was opinion from experts on a report compiled years earlier in another jurisdiction. The report was written on the basis that the circumstances of Ms Fitzpatrick’s death were uncontroversial and uncontested. Nobody sought to have Ms Fitzpatrick’s sister, or the medical personnel from the ambulance, or the pathologist who wrote the report, give any evidence. 

It was just put out there that it was likely that the deceased woman was strangled because the defendant in the case, who had a record of lying and making delusionary statements, had expressed fears that it might have happened.

Thankfully, common sense prevailed in the end. Prosecutor Alan Martin pointed out that manual strangulation was one possibility simply because there was no definite, undisputed cause of death recorded. There could be any other multiple number of reasons behind the tragedy. 

He made the point that even if Ms Fitzpatrick’s death was not attributable directly to asthma, it could easily have been due to cardiac arrest, as the medicine she took to combat the asthma speeded up heartrate. The deceased woman had complained of chest pains and pains down her left side, with would accord with the onset of a heart attack. Both prosecution experts agreed that manual strangulation was “far from probable".

The Fitzpatrick family’s voice was ultimately heard through a statement read out in court.

“The last eight years since Jason was brutally murdered have been unimaginable. This week has been extremely hard for all of our family, especially Mags’s mother, Marian," it said.

What the Martens claimed is totally inaccurate and untrue. Mags suffered with asthma all her life. She had a nebuliser in her home.

The statement went on to give the circumstances of Mags’ death as outlined above and then said: “Mags was a great daughter, the rock in our family, a loving wife and mother. We miss Jason dearly. He was a part of our family and continued to be after Mags died. He was Mags’s soul mate. 

All we want is peace and closure for Jack and Sarah. We want the world to know the depth of Mags’s and Jason’s love. Nothing can tarnish the love between Mags and Jason.

But why were the Fitzpatrick and Corbett families subjected to what was a pointless and harrowing revisiting of Mags’ tragic death?

Best defence money can buy

The simple answer is money. The Martens family are well off and in a position to afford the best defence that money can buy. That is evident in many aspects to the sentencing hearing. 

It lasted for eight days and at times took on the character of a quasi-trial rather than a hearing to assist the judge in determining the most appropriate penalty. Ordinarily, such a hearing might be dispensed with in less than an hour.

Once the defence was not constrained by cost, it was possible to open up a range of possibilities within the US system. The introduction of allegations around Mags Fitzpatrick’s death was reinforced by the retention of two medical experts. That in turn required the prosecution to access their own expertise.

The outcome was a scenario which might have, against a different prosecutor or less competent judge, introduced doubt which would go towards the defence case for a lenient sentence. Once the money was available, the system allows as much elasticity as can be bought.

It’s all a long, long way from the vast majority of criminal cases in the USA which involve poor people defended by public sector employees, many if not most of whom are not up to the standard of counsel deployed by the prosecution. 

If your average defendant in the system proposed investigating on a flimsy basis the circumstances of an unrelated death years before in another jurisdiction, he would be referred to psychiatric services. When you have money, it’s a different system completely.

There is much that is not perfect about the criminal justice system in this country, but at least representation in court is not based on ability to pay. For such small mercies we can be grateful that the Irish system would never have put up with what unfolded last week in North Carolina.