The district attorney whose office prosecuted Molly Martens and her father Thomas Martens over the killing of Jason Corbett has said while he is not happy with the outcome, he believes his office secured justice “as best we could in the circumstances”.
Garry Frank told The Irish Times he was comfortable with the efforts made by his office to obtain justice or to prevent an injustice.
He said changes to the rules of evidence put in place by the North Carolina supreme court had put prosecutors “at what we felt like was more exposure to a possible successful defence”.
On Wednesday, a court in Lexington, North Carolina, sentenced Molly Martens and Thomas Martens to between 51 months and 74 months in prison over the killing of Limerick man Jason Corbett in the bedroom of his home near Winston-Salem in August 2015.
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Last month, prosecutors reached a plea agreement with the defence under which Molly Martens did not contest the charge of voluntary manslaughter of her husband.
Thomas Martens had pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter. Prosecutors in return dropped charges of second degree murder.
Molly Martens and her father had originally been convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to between 20 and 25 years in prison. However, these convictions were quashed by an appeal court, a decision later upheld by the supreme court in North Carolina.
In an interview with The Irish Times, Mr Frank set out the thinking in his office about negotiating the plea agreement with the defence.
He said that from “day one” his office had been looking at voluntary manslaughter in the case. His office had initially indicted the defendants for voluntary manslaughter in addition to second degree murder. He said his office backed off the manslaughter charge when it went forward on the basis of second degree murder, as it could not pursue both at the time.
“But there has been a considerable opinion within my office that voluntary manslaughter was an acceptable disposition from day one.”
Mr Frank said: “From the very first day, this was a difficult case because of the fact that the two people who could testify about what took place in that room were the defendants. We had to use the physical evidence to try to carry our side of the argument as to what took place in that room.
“Then when the case was heard in the supreme court, they not only reversed the conviction, they changed some of the rules; evidentiary rulings of the trial judge to put us at a what we felt like was more exposure to a possible successful defence.”
He said his office had to make its decision “looking at all of the evidence, all the possibilities, and the age of the case relative to getting witnesses back in and pursuing the matter”. The latter “wasn’t really a big factor but it was part of the overall factor of whether or not it would be an acceptable way of going forward on... the voluntary manslaughter plea”.
Mr Frank said one of the changes put in place by the supreme court was that interviews given originally by Mr Corbett’s two young children at Dragonfly House, a child advocacy centre in North Carolina, could be brought into evidence.
He said the rule changes regarding evidence meant it was “more likely that the defence’s theory about this being domestic violence, and the dad [Thomas Martens] being a hero for coming in and protecting his daughter [Molly Martens] would be possibly believed by at least one juror, and that’s all it would have taken to derail conviction”.
One of the most controversial elements of the case was the claims made by counsel for the defence that Jason Corbett may have killed his first wife, Margaret Corbett. Health authorities in Ireland had found she died as a result of an asthma attack.
Mr Frank said medical experts commissioned in the United States by his office maintained they could not point to a cause of death but that “they agreed it was not asthma”.
Mr Frank said he was not being critical of the autopsy carried out on Margaret Corbett in Ireland in 2006 and that his office had not done so in court. He said the report had “left some things open” that could have been pursued by the defence.
He said that after initially being taken to the county jail following sentencing on Wednesday, Molly Martens and Thomas Martens would subsequently be transported to the North Carolina department of corrections.
He said this department would calculate how long they will spend in jail given that they had already been imprisoned for 44 months before the appeal court quashed their original sentence. This would be based on their record and behaviour in custody previously.
Asked whether the district attorney’s office was satisfied with the sentences, Mr Frank said: “I wouldn’t say we’re happy. I mean, I can only speak for myself. You know, what everyone is wrapped up in this idea, almost like sports that you win or you lose, you know, we have a winner or a loser. Or anytime there’s a dead human being, there isn’t a winner in the case. It is an attempt to seek justice. And justice is a moving target. Everyone would like everything to be the other way that there’s a clear winner and a clear loser. But, I tell folks, sometimes part of my job is just as much trying to prevent an injustice as it is to obtain justice.
“And basically, you take what you’re handed. You have to take the quality of your witnesses, the evidence, you have the law, which, you know, we felt like the first trial judge was right on some issues of law that he was overruled. And so then we have to drop back and look at it from that perspective. So... I’m not happy with the outcome. But I’m comfortable with the efforts of my office to obtain justice or to prevent an injustice.”
Asked whether justice was secured by the ruling on Wednesday, he said: “As best we could, under all the circumstances, I would say yes it was”.
