Judge Perrin is sentenced to Jail

Former Judge Perrin is jailed for two and a half years for being convicted of deception. Heather Perrin became the first member of the judiciary to be found guilty of a serious crime in the history of the State after she induced an elderly client to leave half of his €1m estate to her two children.

Perrin (61) of Malahide, Co Dublin, was working as Thomas Davis’s solicitor at the time of the offence in January 2009. Perrin burst into tears as she heard her sentence at Dublin’s Circuit Criminal Court yesterday. Delivering sentence, Judge Mary Ellen Ring described the case as “one of the most serious breaches of trust” to come before the courts.

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Perrin and Mr Davis, 83, were close friends when she worked as his solicitor. He asked her to help him make a will. He was going to leave some money to her two children, but Perrin made out that he was leaving half of his estate to her kids. The court heard he considered her children as family.  Perrin had represented him throughout most of her career, and had been close friends with his wife Ada since childhood. The court had been told that Mr Davis intended to leave €2,000 to each of Perrin’s children. Davis was unaware of the changes that Perrin had made to his will. A Garda investigation was launched after the false will was exposed and Perrin was charged in July 2011. Her trial began on November 9 this year. The eight-day trial came to an end when the jury unanimously convicted her of the single charge last week.

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Perrin, dressed in black, had walked in to the court building using crutches as she recovers from knee replacement surgery. Her husband Albert broke down after embracing his wife as she was led away by prison officers.

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 aged in his 80’s, suffered 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.

This case is one of the worst cases of deception in Ireland to date and even more worse that it was a judge that has been convicted of deception.