Gardaí were involved in leaking information to the media in a concerted "campaign" before the trial of Catherine Nevin, the Court of Criminal Appeal was told today.
Nevin - who did not appear in court - began an appeal against her conviction for murdering her husband, Tom, nearly seven years ago. The case began this morning before three judges - Mr Justice Geoghegan Mr Justice Quirke, and Mr Justice Peart.
Counsel for Nevin, Mr Paddy MacEntee SC, opened the appeal by telling the presiding judges he would be arguing nine points. The first of these was the adverse publicity before and during the trial.
Mr MacEntee argued the Gardai were involved in leaking information to the media in a "campaign" to condition people into having a version of the events.
He quoted from numerous articles that gave a version of the murder and cited Garda sources as being responsible for the information.
"They [the newspaper articles] all add up to a concerted and consistent campaign to keep Mrs Nevin before the public and to run the case they wanted to make in court and to keep them before the public," Mr MacEntee said.
"Its [the campaign] purpose can only be to prejudice a fair trial by giving information to the public at large including journalists, to do that is to prejudice a fair trial," he added.
Mr MacEntee said he did not have the chance to evaluate the effect of alleged Garda leaks at the original trial because the trial judge Ms Justice Carroll would not allow him to ask journalists to reveal their sources.
"The difficulty we were in is we wanted to probe the journalists to find who were their sources," Mr MacEntee said.
When asked by Mr Justice Geoghegan if a potential juror could be conditioned that they could not take an objective view, Mr MacEntee said: "People don't always know that they're prejudice" adding that he was seeking to establish "a real risk of bias" in the original trial.
The family of Nevin's murdered husband attended court. The case - which is expected to last four days - continues this afternoon.
Nevin is serving a life sentence in Dublin's Mountjoy prison
