A judge has ruled that Molly Martens and her father Tom can have their retrial over the killing of Irishman Jason Corbett moved to another part of North Carolina.
Former beauty queen Martens, 38, argued she and her 72-year-old ex-FBI agent dad Tom would not receive a fair trial over the second-degree murder of the Limerick-born widower if the trial took place in Davidson County.
The ruling by a US judge is seen as a major victory for the pair and a significant setback for the prosecution and the Corbett family.
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Superior Court Judge David Hall said he would allow the case to move to Forsyth County in a move that is a victory for the two defendants.
Jason Corbett, 39, was beaten to death in the bedroom of his upmarket North Carolina home with a metal baseball bat and a concrete brick by his American-born second wife and his father-in-law in August 2015.
His family and their supporters claim the killing came about over a blazing row over control of his two young children, Jack and Sarah.
The pair maintained they killed Limerick-born Mr Corbett in self-defence but a jury did not believe their claims. Molly, who was at one stage Mr Corbett’s children’s nanny, and her father were both found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to between 20 and 25 years in prison in 2017.
In recent days, prosecutors strongly opposed the transfer of the new murder trial insisting a fair and impartial jury could be selected in Davidson County, a largely working class area where the original conviction took place.
On the other hand, defence lawyers claimed the pair had been targeted by an intense social media campaign over the killing which had now “infected” the potential jury pool in Davidson County.
It has emerged that Forsyth County has a much larger and more diverse middle-class population.
Legal experts suggest the second murder trial may hinge on who the jury believes to have been the abuser and who was the abused in the marriage.
In the original 2017 trial, prosecutors argued that Mr Corbett was asleep in bed when the fatal attack by Tom and Molly Martens began.
They also argued an attempt had been made to drug him, that he was beaten even after he was dead and that Tom and Molly Martens then callously delayed alerting the emergency services.
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