‘It’s time for Mags and Jason to rest in peace’
Family of Corbett’s f irst wife can f inally close the door on their ordeal
THE sister of murdered Irishman Jason Corbett’s first wife has said the family is ready to ‘close the door’ on their ordeal.
Speaking after Molly and Tom Martens were sentenced to a further 7–30 months for violently killing Mr Corbett in North Carolina in 2015, Catherine Fitzpatrick Hyland – a sister of Mags Fitzpatrick Corbett – told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘The whole thing has been heartbreaking for me and my family and we just want to close the door on it and let Mags and Jason rest in peace now.’
Tom Martens had pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in a plea deal that saw the original charge of second-degree murder dropped, while his daughter Molly did not contest the voluntary manslaughter charge.
The Martens had used Ms Fitzpatrick Corbett’s 2006 death in a last-ditch attempt to paint Mr Corbett as a monster during their sentence hearings over the last two weeks.
Following a claim made by their defence team that Ms Fitzpatrick Corbett may have died from strangulation, a forensic pathologist from Kentucky called by the prosecution as an expert witness questioned the original Irish autopsy report, and said it was possible that Ms Fitzpatrick Corbett may have died from strangulation and not an asthma attack.
This prompted an angry rebuke from the Fitzpatrick family, who spoke of ‘wildly inaccurate and untrue… lies’ in a statement.
The family clarified that Mags’s sister Catherine Fitzpatrick Hyland had been present on the night she suffered an asthma attack that led to her death.
They also said her distraught husband had done everything in his power to save the mother of his two children.
Commenting on the US hearing, leading Irish barrister Mark Tottenham, who has written two books on expert witnesses, said bombshell claims made during the sentence hearings in North Carolina could not have happened here.
Mr Tottenham said it would be ‘very, very rare’ that such evidence would be called during a sentence hearing in Ireland.
He told the MoS: ‘Normally when you plead guilty, you’re trying to persuade the court to give you a break and give you the lightest sentence possible, so it would be very rare that you would go in trying to blacken the name of the victim. Normally they would say, “Things weren’t great, I made a mistake. I’m terribly sorry.” Because they’re admitting they’ve done something wrong.’
Mr Tottenham said the US ‘stands alone’ from other common law countries like Ireland and other English-speaking countries, whose court rulings tend to inform each other.
‘In Ireland, the UK, Canada and Australia and most other common law jurisdictions, you only call expert evidence if it’s necessary for the court to determine a fact or an issue in the case,’ he explained.
‘My view is that the courts in most common law countries would not admit this expert evidence [in the Martens case] for the simple reason that, in relation to whether or not his first wife was murdered, that doesn’t really prove anything. ‘It might be that Molly Martens had a belief that his first wife was murdered and she might have had a reason for that belief. But it’s very unlikely that she had any actual knowledge of the state of the post mortem examination or any of that other evidence.’
The Martens’ defence called another expert witness, who said there was evidence to suggest Mr Corbett had been an abusive husband and father.
‘As far as I can see, the only evidence that the so-called expert on marital abuse had was a recording of a domestic argument.
‘It might not reflect very well on someone, but to try and extrapolate from that and say that he might have been physically abusive is a step that I don’t think any court would consider persuasive.’
Mr Tottenham said most courts in common law countries are ‘very, very careful to ensure that expert witnesses are independent – that they don’t bat for their own client’.
‘There’s loads and loads of case law saying “This expert stepped over the line. He was basically arguing for his own client.”
‘What the courts need is somebody who’ll come in and tell us something that we don’t already know in relation to the facts of the case. For example, a pathologist might give evidence that the nature of bruises would tend to show that somebody was assaulted rather than that they fell over. The kind of thing that you or I wouldn’t know from looking at a deceased body.
‘A lot of things seem to happen in the US that wouldn’t happen in other countries, so they seem to be a little bit more flexible and a little bit more tolerant of people spending a lot of money on an expert to put forward a debatable theory.’
‘But it’s also worth remembering that there are 50 different states and the rules of evidence in one US state may be different from the rules in another US state.’
In powerful impact statements made by Mr Corbett and Ms Fitzpatrick Corbett’s children Jack (19) and Sarah (17) this week, the siblings
‘It’s been heartbreaking for me and my family’
‘We were weaponised by that living monster’
described how they had been ‘weaponised’ by the ‘living monster’ Molly Martens, who became their stepmother after Mr Corbett remarried in 2011. They said Ms Martens had taught them how to shoplift, how to vomit and how to lie.
‘I lied to help the Martens escape full justice for taking my father’s life,’ Sarah said, in relation to statements she made to investigators shortly after her father’s death.
A woman in the Janesborough area of Limerick, where the Corbett family come from, this weekend said the community was ‘absolutely appalled’ with the sentence handed down to the Martens.
The woman, who did not wish to be named, said the Corbett children have been ‘doing amazing’ in the local secondary school.
She added it’s a ‘total disgrace’ Ms Fitzpatrick Corbett’s tragic death was dredged up by the Martens’ defence.