‘Nine years, and I never get to see his face again’
On hearing the sentence handed down by Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy at the Central Criminal Court, Lisa Nevin became emotional and began screaming. She could be heard saying: “Nine years, and I never get to see his face again.”
Her family and gardaí tried to get her to be quiet before she was taken out of court.
At a trial last month, Cluskey, aged 25, from Mooretown, Ratoath, Co Meath, was found not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter for killing Mr Nevin outside a house no Tailteann Rd in Navan on November 19, 2015.
His co-accused, Josh Turner, aged 24, also from Mooretown, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life.
The fight happened after Turner loaned Mr Nevin a male chihuahua to breed with three female chihuahuas.
When only one of the dogs got pregnant, there was a dispute over how much money Mr Nevin would pay to Turner.
At yesterday’s hearing, Mr Justice McCarthy said the appropriate sentence for what Cluskey did would be 12 years but he was reducing it to nine having taken into account his offer of a plea of guilty to manslaughter before the trial began.
He noted the impact statements made by Lisa Nevin and Christopher’s mother, Mary Nevin, in which they described how their lives and families were broken by his death.
He also said he had considered the fact Cluskey handed himself into gardaí but said he was not impressed by the fact that he then gave the gardaí a “version of events that was manifestly untrue”.
The sentence was backdated to November 23, 2015, when Cluskey first went into custody.
