Landmark decision finds judge guilty of trying to deceive elderly friend

A district court judge has been convicted of attempting to deceive her elderly friend out of half of his estate while he was a client of her solicitors’ firm.

Heather Perrin, aged 60, was found guilty by a jury yesterday after a seven-day trial which heard she tricked her victim into bequeathing half his estate, worth about €1m, to her two children.

Perrin ran a solicitors’ practice in north Dublin before being appointed a district court judge in Feb 2009, a month after she carried out the scam.

The jury returned a guilty verdict after three hours and 43 minutes of deliberation.

The judge was remanded on continuing bail until Nov 28 for sentencing. She was ordered to surrender her passport to Malahide Garda Station by 3.30pm yesterday.

Perrin, of Lambay Court, Malahide, had pleaded not guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to deceptively inducing Mr Davis to bequeath half of his estate to Sybil and Adam Perrin, at her office on Fairview Strand on Jan 22, 2009.

She faces a maximum jail term of five years.

She is the first judge in the history of the State to be convicted of a serious crime. She is on long-term sick leave and can only be removed from the bench by the Oireachtas.

According to the prosecuting counsel Dominic McGinn SC, Perrin fought the case using “lies, half-truths, and deceptions”. When the scam first came to light she claimed it was a mistake by her secretary but later claimed she had drafted the will in line with Mr Davis’s instructions.

Her defence team suggested that Mr Davis, who is in his 80s, suffered from memory problems and had forgotten leaving half his estate to the Perrin children.

The prosecution produced medical evidence that Mr Davis had a good mental capacity and no memory problems.

The trial heard that Thomas and Ada Davis decided to make their wills with Perrin before she was officially made a judge.

Mr Davis gave instructions to leave €2,000 each to various churches, €2,000 each to Perrin’s children, and split everything else between his two nieces.

When he went into her office to sign the will he was not given an opportunity to read it nor was it read over to him. He said he did not have a problem with this as he trusted Perrin.

The trial heard that the will Mr Davis signed actually split his estate between his nieces and Perrin’s two children.

When a new law firm took over Perrin’s practice they wrote to the Davis’s querying several irregularities in their legal documents.

Eventually the firm examined Mr Davis’s will and noticed the bequest to the Perrin children.