Infamous NC murder was documented on CBS. Appeals court just reversed the conviction

Jason Corbett died of blunt force head trauma at his North Carolina residence in 2015, according to court documents. His wife and her father were convicted of his murder.

But after nearly three years behind bars, the pair will get another chance in court.

In a split decision Tuesday with one judge dissenting, the N.C. Court of Appeals reversed the jury’s 2017 conviction. The three-judge panel found that issues with how evidence was presented — or omitted — in court warranted a new trial.

“This case is deceptively simple, boiling down to whether defendants lawfully used deadly force to defend themselves and each other during the tragic altercation with Jason,” the opinion states. “Having thoroughly reviewed the record and transcript, it is evident that this is the rare case in which certain evidentiary errors, alone and in the aggregate, were so prejudicial as to inhibit defendants’ ability to present a full and meaningful defense.”

CBS aired a “48 HOURS” special last year detailing the now-infamous case.

According to the appellate judges’ opinion, Molly Corbett was Jason’s au pair in Ireland after his first wife died in 2004. They eventually moved to Davidson County in North Carolina with his two children and got married.

Her father, Thomas Martens, was visiting from Tennessee with his wife when things got violent on Aug. 1, the defense argued.

Jason Corbett was reportedly choking Molly when Martens — clad only in “a golf shirt and boxer shorts” and armed with an aluminum bat — stormed into their bedroom after being awoken by screams, the opinion states.

A fight ensued, and Molly eventually hit her husband with a brick paver that was sitting on her nightstand, appellate judges said.

When Martens regained control of the bat, he hit Jason Corbett “until he felt certain that Jason ‘could not kill’ them.”

“My, my, uh, daughter’s husband, uh, my son-in-law, uh, got in a fight with my daughter, I intervened, and I, I think, um, and, he’s in bad shape. We need help. . . . He, he’s bleeding all over, and I, I may have killed him,” Martens reportedly told 911 operators.

According to a paramedic who arrived on scene, all of his left “fingers went inside the skull” when he attempted to lift Jason’s chin.

Molly Corbett would later testify her husband had become enraged when he was awoken in the night. A jury found the pair guilty of second-degree murder on Aug. 9, 2017. They were each sentenced to between 20 and 25 years in prison.

But in granting their appeal Tuesday, appellate judges found the court made several errors with evidence during the trial.

Statements Jason Corbett’s children made to social workers and during medical evaluations after his death — including that their father would “physically and verbally hurt” Molly and that he got angry for “ridiculous reasons” — should have been permitted, according to the opinion.

Appellate judges also found certain testimony by an expert witness as to “bloodstain pattern analysis” shouldn’t have been allowed given that the stains in question — which appeared “on the underside of Tom’s boxer shorts and the bottom of Molly’s pajama pants” — hadn’t been tested.

The jury was additionally instructed in error as to the “aggressor doctrine” as it related to Martens, according to the appeals court.

“Tom argues that the trial court committed reversible error by instructing the jury that he would not be entitled to the full benefit of self-defense or defense of a family member if the jury found that he were the initial aggressor in the altercation with Jason,” the opinion states. “We agree.”

Appellate judges said those factors taken together could have reasonably prejudiced Molly Corbett and her father.

“The jury was denied critical evidence and rendered incapable of performing its constitutional function,” according to the opinion. “Defendants are therefore entitled to a new trial.”