A woman who shot her husband dead with a gun she had bought him for Christmas nine days earlier has been freed.
Mother-of-two, Ms Norma Cotter (36) was today given a three-and-a-half year jail sentence at the Central Criminal Court for the manslaughter of her husband Gary (40), who was a corporal in the Irish army.
But she avoided further imprisonment because she had served her time awaiting trial.
Handing down the sentence, Mr Justice Michael Peart said there were "times when the court's punishment must be tempered with some mercy and compassion".
The court heard Ms Cotter killed her husband during a drunken row at their Co Cork home on January 3rd, 1995, with the shotgun she had given him for Christmas.
She was found guilty of her husband's murder in 1996, but the conviction was quashed on appeal by the Court of Criminal Appeal leading to a retrial.
Last week she had pleaded not guilty to murder and a jury was sworn in for the trial. But the jurors were discharged when she pleaded guilty to manslaughter and it was accepted by the prosecution.