Nevin cleared of possessing mobile phone in prison

October 2009

CONVICTED murderer Catherine Nevin has been acquitted of possessing a mobile phone in prison after a prison guard couldn’t confirm if a phone in court was the same one the 58-yearold was found with at the Dochas centre in Mountjoy Prison

If convicted on the mobile phone charge, Nevin could have faced fines of up to €5,000 or she could have had her life sentence extended by up to five years.

She did her best to have the case postponed until after her appeal against her murder conviction is heard by the Court of Criminal Appeal, having claimed that any conviction relating to the mobile phone would have been redundant if her conviction for murdering her husband, Tim Nevin, was declared a miscarriage of justice.

During the week Judge Aeneas McCarthy, sitting at Dublin District Court, heard Nevin was charged with possessing a mobile phone, contrary to the Prisons Act 2007, at the Dochas Centre on January 28 of last year.

She is classified as a ‘privileged’ prisoner, and lives in rooms with minimal supervision in the prison complex.

At the time Nevin shared a cell with Nokukhanya Cele from South Africa, serving a sentence for importing drugs.