Mary Devins

Mary Devins is a District Court judge in County Mayo, Ireland. She is the wife of Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children, Dr. Jimmy Devins from Sligo. She caused controversy in 2004 when she wondered aloud in court whether she could trust the evidence of members of An Garda Síochána . In 2007, she likened Shell to Sea campaigners on trial before her on public order charges to the Tianamen Square protesters.
In Belmullet District Court in March 2009, Devins sentenced Shell to Sea spokeswoman Maura Harrington to a month in Mountjoy Prison for assaulting a Garda during a fracas which saw twenty protesters injured. Harrington refused to take the stand in protest after Devins refused to allow video evidence of the incident. In a move described by Senator David Norris as being reminiscent of the commitment of political dissidents in the old Stalinist dictatorships of Eastern Europe to mental institutions, Devins directed Harrington to undergo a psychiatric assessment, due to what she described as her "bizarre" behaviour. Unlike the case of Aubrey Flynn, daughter of politican Pádraig Flynn, whom she also directed to undergo a psychiatric assessment, Devins did not wait for the results of Harrington's assessment before sentencing her.
In April 2009, Devins was asked to recuse herself from cases involving Shell to Sea campaigners. She refused. In the same month, she again criticised a Garda for dishonesty

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