In recent years miscarriages of justice have captivated international fascination with the likes of podcast “The Serial”and the Netflix hit “Making a Murderer”. Here in Ireland we are no strangers to wrongful convictions. But the case that gave rise to the first ever posthumous Presidential pardon is extraordinarily shocking and horrific. SCANNAL recalls the 1940 murder of Moll McCarthy in Marlhill, New Inn, Co. Tipperary. The mother of six children was brutally killed with a shotgun blast to her neck. Forensic reports indicate her body was then dressed and moved to where she was found in a field, where a second shot blasted away her face almost entirely. Her neighbour Harry Gleeson was charged, tried, convicted, lost all his appeals, was refused any clemency and then hanged – all in the space of 5 months. In 2015 – 75 years later – The Irish State granted Harry Gleeson a posthumous pardon, finally admitting a terrible miscarriage of justice had taken place to an innocent man that our justice system had wrongly made into a murderer. The Presidential pardon leaves Harry Gleeson an innocent man – hanged in the wrong. But it also leaves so many questions unanswered. If Harry didn’t, then who did murder Moll McCarthy? If Harry Gleeson was innocent, how did this all happen? And why did it take so long to set to right? Some answers lie in the fact that the murder of Moll McCarthy is inextricably linked with powerful forces in our society – sex, religion, politics and how we deal with outsiders; qualities that make for tightly knit communities but also have a very dark side.