breaking news, Heather Perrin, of Lambay Court, Malahide, Co Dublin, judge convicted

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breaking news, Heather Perrin, of Lambay Court, Malahide, Co Dublin, judge convicted

A District Court judge has been found guilty of inducing a client to leave half his estate to her two children when she was a solicitor.

Heather Perrin, of Lambay Court, Malahide, Co Dublin, had denied including her children as major beneficiaries of the estate of Thomas Davis in 2009.

Judge Me Not


A jury found her guilty by unanimous verdict after three hours and 43 minutes of deliberation since yesterday.

She was released on bail but ordered to surrender her passport, and will be sentenced next Wednesday.
Mr Davis, who is in his 80s, had told the trial his will was not read over to him before he signed it in January 2009.

A copy he received contained an instruction to leave €2,000 to each of Ms Perrin's children in accordance with his wishes.

This copy was unsigned and undated.

He said he trusted Heather Perrin, who had been his solicitor and friend for decades.

While he and his wife were like family to the Perrins, they did not intend to leave her children half a share in a €1m estate.

This was to be left to his wife's two nieces, he said.

The deception was discovered when Ms Perrin was appointed a judge and transferred her practice to another firm of solicitors.

The prosecution said when challenged about the will, Ms Perrin said it was a secretarial error but later changed her story and said the will reflected Mr Davis's wishes.

Prosecuting counsel Dominic McGinn said she had used a defence of lies, half truths and prevarication and had colluded with and coached the only defence witness.

The defence had questioned Mr Davis's memory and said Ms Perrin would not have been so obvious if she wanted to enrich her children.

She would not have appointed herself as executor and got her husband to witness the will as the document would not have stood up to challenge.

Defence counsel Patrick Gageby said the inclusion of her children was only half an inch above Mr Davis's signature so he would have seen it.

A secretary working for Ms Perrin at the time said she was present when the will was read over to Mr Davis before he signed it.

It is the first time a judge has been convicted of a serious offence. However, Circuit Court Judge Brian Curtin resigned after child pornography charges against him could not proceed as the search warrant had been a number of hours out of date.