Harry Gleeson was convicted of the murder in November 1940 of Mary McCarthy, and was executed in Mountjoy Prison on April 23, 1941. Following a review of his conviction by Shane Murphy SC, the President granted a posthumous pardon to him in 2015. Last weekend his remains were interred in Holycross Abbey in Tipperary, accompanied by music played on a fiddle owned by him. Highlighting the problems which led to his unsafe conviction is instructive more than 80 years later when considering the conduct of criminal trials.  Among those errors was a failure by the prosecution to disclose a Garda…

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