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Catherine Nevin (née Scully, born 1 October 1950) is an Irish woman who was convicted in 2000 of murdering her husband Tom Nevin at Jack White's Inn, a pub owned by the couple in County Wicklow.

The jury in her trial also found her guilty on three charges of soliciting others to kill him after five days of deliberation, then the longest period of deliberation in the history of the Irish State. Nevin was the subject of significant coverage by the tabloid press and Justice Mella Carroll ordered a ban on the press commenting on Nevin's appearance or demeanour during the trial.

Doubts have been raised about the safety of Nevin's conviction and her lawyers say that she was the victim of a miscarriage of justice.

Early life

Catherine Scully met Tom Nevin in Dublin in 1970 and they were married in Rome in 1976. Within ten years, they owned two houses and managed a pub in Finglas, Dublin. In 1986, they opened Jack White's Inn.

Murder of Tom Nevin

On 19 March 1996, Tom Nevin was killed with a shot from a nine pellet shotgun while counting the day's takings in Jack White's pub near Brittas Bay in County Wicklow. According to Catherine Nevin, she was woken by someone pressing her face into a pillow. She said: "It was a man shouting: 'f**king jewellery, f**king kill ya'. He had a knife in his left hand. Everything in the room was coming down around." IR£13,000 was taken from the pub, and the Nevins' car was stolen and was found abandoned in Dublin.

Wikipedia.org

Catherine Nevin loses ‘miscarriage of justice’ appeal

The ‘Black Widow’ is told that secret garda files have raised no new evidence for an appeal of her murder conviction

TheJournal.ie

November 22, 2010

‘BLACK WIDOW’ CATHERINE NEVIN has this morning lost her attempt to have her murder conviction declared a miscarriage of justice.

Nevin – who was found guilty ten years ago for the murder of her husband Tom at Jack White’s Pub at Brittas, Co Wicklow – was this morning told at the Criminal Courts of Justice that there were no new relevant facts in her case.

As a result, the trial judge said, there was no basis on which to revisit the earlier judgement that found her guilty of soliciting the services of three men to kill her husband Tom on March 19, 1996.

Nevin’s lawyer said she was “very disappointed”, adding that she had “had great faith in that court to vindicate the constitutional right to a fair trial.”

She said, however, that the verdict would be appealed, “almost certainly” to the European Court of Justice.

The Court of Criminal Appeal had previously refused a request from Nevin’s legal team to access secret Garda intelligence files on the three men Nevin was found guilty of soliciting.

It did order, however, that those secret files be made available to the three judges of the court.

Wife jailed after marathon trial

BBC.co.uk

April 12, 2000

A pub landlady has been convicted of her husband's murder following one of the longest courtroom sagas in the Republic of Ireland's legal history.

Guilty verdicts on charges of murder and soliciting three men to murder were returned against Catherine Nevin in Dublin's Central Criminal Court on Tuesday evening.

The verdicts were returned after the jury of six men and six women had been out for nearly five days - a record in Irish legal history.

Nevin was immediately handed a mandatory life jail term for the murder, but sentencing on the other charges against her were adjourned.

The verdicts were reached unanimously on the murder and on an 11-1 majority on the other counts.

They followed one of Ireland's most sensational and high-profile murder trials.

Nevin, 49, pleaded not guilty at the start of the proceedings in February to killing her 54-year-old husband Thomas on St Patrick's Day weekend in 1996.

Mr Nevin was shot dead at Jack White's Inn, the pub he ran with his wife in Ballinapark, County Wexford on the main road between Dublin and Rosslare.

She had also denied three charges of soliciting men, two of them with hardline republican links, to carry out the murder.

In the course of her trial, the court heard of allegations by Nevin that her husband had been a member of the IRA, a homosexual and a drunkard.

'Contract' killing

Evidence had also been heard that the accused woman had affairs before the death of Mr Nevin with a local judge and a senior Irish police officer.

The affairs were denied in court by both the judge and members of Mr Nevin's family refuted suggestions he had ever been in the IRA.

Sentencing Nevin, trial judge Miss Justice Mella Carroll told her: "You had your husband assassinated, and you tried to assassinate his character as well.

"I hope his family will take some consolation from this verdict."

The trial heard prosecution allegations that Nevin bore animosity to her husband and wanted control of their pub.

It was claimed Mr Nevin died in a botched robbery designed to conceal a contract killing carried out at the behest of his wife.

It was said Nevin approached a member of Sinn Fein to see if the IRA would carry out the killing.

The jury heard evidence from 170 witnesses and a three-day address from defence counsel Patrick MacEntee, SC, earlier this week.

The trial originally began in January, but had to be abandoned when it was found discussions among the jury could be heard in the public gallery of the court.

Then a second trial was delayed for some days when Mrs Nevin was taken ill at the Dublin address where she had been staying during the court hearing.