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Molly Martens and her father Tom were granted release from jail on a $200,000 bail on Wednesday afternoon at a sitting of the Davidson County Courthouse in North Carolina.
The father and daughter were convicted on charges of murder in the second degree in August 2017, but the conviction was quashed by an appeals court, and upheld by the North Carolina Supreme Court last month.
Mr Martens (71) and his daughter (39) were led into the court in handcuffs and ankle shackles.
Mr Martens, a former FBI agent, was wearing an orange jump suit, while Ms Martens was dressed in a navy boiler suit. Her hair was tied in a bun.
Mr Alan Martin for the state argued that the bond should be set at $1 million (€842,435), but this was rejected by the judge.
Instead, he put the bond at $200,000 – the same level as the bond agreed during their pre-trial agreement while awaiting the original trial.
The court was told that Mr Martens and his daughter posed no flight risk, while Mr Martens had been a “model inmate.”
Mr Martens’s wife was also receiving treatment for cancer and was present in court. Also at the hearing were Molly Martens’s three brothers and their spouses.
Mr Martin detailed the events of August 2015, when Limerick man Jason Corbett was found dead in his home. The cause of the death was a fractured skill, and severe blows to the head.
Mr Corbett (39) was beaten to death as he slept in his North Carolina home, which he shared with his second wife Molly Martens and his two children, Jack and Sarah, from his previous marriage to his late wife Margaret Fitzpatrick, who died after suffering an asthma attack in 2006.
Molly Martens and Tom Martens beat Mr Corbett to death with a metal baseball bat and a concrete paving brick, their trial had heard.
However, they claimed they had acted in self-defence after Mr Corbett tried to choke Ms Martens. Despite this defence, the trial heard that when police and paramedics arrived at the house they found no visible marks on Molly and Tom Martens.
The Martens had been transferred from separate high-security prisons, where they were serving their murder sentences, to Davidson County jailhouse.
Almost 8,000 signatures have been added to a petition launched by the Corbett family which seeks a “Retrial for Molly and Tom Martens” and which will be sent to Davidson County district attorney Garry Frank.
Mr Frank, who informed the Corbett family last week he had offered the Martens a plea bargain deal rather than seek a retrial – due to a backlog in criminal cases because of Covid-19 – could not be reached for comment.
‘Devastated’
Ms Corbett Lynch, who won custody of her brother’s children Jack (16) and Sarah (14), said the family were “devastated” at the DA’s decision.
Her brother John Corbett, who works for the NHS in London, has written to the DA as well as US president Joe Biden expressing his “dismay” at the plea bargain offer to “two cold narcissistic individuals”.
“My many colleagues in the UK NHS health system are also totally dismayed how two cold-blooded murderers are being gifted leniency by the North Carolina justice system,” John Corbett wrote.
“Two cold individuals who used weapons way beyond the reasonable amount of force necessary to kill someone (I have 21 years’ military service). Two individuals who did not have a scratch on them . . . Some individuals would get five years in prison for theft.
“We as a family, like any family in the world who have lost a family member to a brutal cowardly murder, would want normal justice. Sadly, the justice system seems, in this case, to be working for the murderers, and not for the life they have coldly taken for their own narcissistic agenda.
“It is a truly sad day as all eyes are on the inequality and injustice being played out at the moment in North Carolina,” he added.