As the Catherine Nevin murder trial draws to a close, the senior defence lawyer referred to what he described as "circumstantial evidence" against his client and challenged the credibility of a series of witnesses called by the prosecution.
Mr Patrick MacEntee SC warned the jury yesterday that "there is no quick fix in this case". The circumstantial evidence against his client on the murder charge was "inadequate evidence" but the soliciting charges also presented difficulties.
He said the case had attracted "saturation media coverage" but the jury must decide it purely on the basis of the evidence they heard in court.
The presumption of innocence was a keystone of the justice system, and not a "shibboleth or pious platitude", he said: the onus to prove its case rested with the prosecution at all times.
"There is no onus on Mrs Nevin to prove her innocence, there never was, and the fact that she gave her evidence doesn't move any pick of the onus to her", he said.
Nearing the end of a closing speech for the prosecution that lasted almost four hours, Mr Tom O'Connell drew an analogy between circumstantial evidence and a rope of several strands.
He said you could not hang the guilty person on any one strand, but when all the strands are put together, it can make a strong rope capable of holding a guilty conviction.
Her account of Mr Nevin's alleged IRA membership was "completely new" and "a recent invention designed to deceive you the jury", counsel said.
Mrs Nevin had to invent the IRA story when she realised that her story about a botched robbery was "transparent and threadbare".
Mrs Nevin "needed a better story" to explain an assassination, counsel alleged. Her excuse for not telling gardai about the alleged IRA link was that she made a solemn promise to her husband.
"But in order to give the solemn promise lie any chance of being believed, she couldn't admit to having broken another solemn promise, her matrimonial vows. That's the reason, I submit to you, she couldn't admit to her affair with Tom Kennedy".
Mrs Nevin (49) has pleaded not guilty to the murder of her husband Tom (54) on March 19th, 1996 in their home at Jack White's Inn, Ballinapark, Co Wicklow.
She also denies that on dates in 1989, she solicited Mr John Jones, that in or about 1990 she solicited Mr Gerry Heapes and that on a date unknown in 1990 at St Vincent's Hospital, Dublin, she solicited Mr William McClean, to murder her husband.
Addressing the credibility of the prosecution's first witness on the soliciting charges, the former Sinn Fein member, Mr John Jones, Mr MacEntee asked the jury: "Is he a man whose word you can take beyond all reasonable doubt? Can you rely on him?"
Mr MacEntee told the jury that Mr Jones was a former chairman of a Sinn Fein cumann in Finglas, and that by the prosecution's own admission, "Sinn Fein is related to the IRA".
He said that around the time of the alleged soliciting, Mr Jones was in partnership in a television hire and repair shop with Mr Dessie Ellis, "a man convicted of the possession of explosives, and who went to jail and served a sentence in Portlaoise Prison on the Provisional IRA wing".
During Mr Jones's evidence, the jury heard that he had received a three-year suspended sentence over 20 years ago for receiving a stolen car.
Mr MacEntee referred to this conviction for receiving stolen goods. "Now I ask you, this is the man that is the lynchpin, the pivot, of the count-two charge," Mr MacEntee said. "What is the chairman of a Sinn Fein cumann doing with a stolen car in his garage? Who has stolen cars and what are they for?"
He also asked the jury to consider why Mr Jones allowed "a comparative stranger" to "walk in off the street" a number of times and proposition him to murder her husband.
He suggested that if this happened to a member of the jury, "you would avoid her like a plague on the basis that she was at best mad and at worst dangerous, extremely dangerous".
He said that in evidence, Mr Jones told the trial that he could not remember the name of one of two "senior members" he had spoken to about Mrs Nevin's proposition.
But Mr MacEntee said that in a District Court hearing, Mr Jones gave different evidence. There, Mr Jones had asked what the position would be if he "was not at liberty to give that name", counsel said.
And referring to a statement made by Mr Jones to gardai, Mr MacEntee said that Mr Jones told gardai that he spoke to two senior members "of the `Organisation' ".
"Not members of Sinn Fein, mind you. His choice - `Organisation', with a capital O," said Mr MacEntee.
He told the jurors that if they find Mrs Nevin not guilty on all the three soliciting charges against her, "that will be the end of the matter" and there would be an automatic finding of not guilty on the murder charge.
That was because the prosecution had accepted that unless it gets a conviction on either of the three soliciting charges, "they don't have enough evidence to convict on the murder charge".
That meant that the murder charge standing alone was not enough to convict Mrs Nevin, her counsel said: "It needs the support of one, two or three of the soliciting charges".
Mr MacEntee will continue his final submission for the defence on Monday.