AN APPEAL by Sharon Collins against her conviction for soliciting a hitman to kill her partner and his two sons in 2006 has opened at the Court of Criminal Appeal.
Ms Collins (46), Kildysart Road, Ennis, Co Clare, was jailed for six years after being found guilty in July 2008 after a 32-day trial of soliciting a person to murder PJ Howard and his two sons Robert and Niall Howard.
Collins, who was accused of using the cyber name lyingeyes98 to investigate the hiring of a hitman on the internet, was also found guilty on three counts of conspiring to kill the three men.
At the opening of the appeal hearing yesterday, Tom O’Connell SC, for the DPP, said it was not possible to stand over her conviction for conspiracy as it was “logically unsustainable”.
The court was told it took “at least two people to conspire” and that a jury had been unable to reach a verdict on a charge of conspiracy against Collins’s co- accused, Essam Eid (54).
Eid, a former poker dealer, with an address in Las Vegas, Nevada, was found guilty of demanding money with menace on September 26th, 2006, and of handling items stolen from the Howard family business.
He was also jailed for six years by Mr Justice Roderick Murphy at the Central Criminal Court in October 2008.
David Sutton SC, for Eid, said his client wished to withdraw an appeal against his conviction and would now be appealing the severity of sentence only.
That appeal is expected to get under way later today.
The appeal court of Mr Justice Joseph Finnegan, presiding, sitting with Mr Justice Declan Budd and Mr Justice Daniel O’Keeffe, was told that although the State had agreed the conspiracy conviction should not stand, it remained opposed to Collins’s appeal in respect of her conviction for solicitation.
The court was told that the “whole focus” of the trial had been on “the conspiracy charge” which both sides now accepted “cannot stand”. The solicitation charge was “included as a fall-back position” and was “very much the poor relation”.
Lawyers for Collins argued that the solicitation verdict was now tainted as there had been no effort to “treat them distinctly”.
The appeal court also heard that John Keating, called to give evidence on the ninth day of the trial “ought not to have been treated” as an alibi witness.
The manner in which Mr Keating was dealt “forced” Collins into the witness box and this was “a stand-alone ground” in itself.
It was also argued that the trial judge’s charge to the jury in respect of Mr Keating’s evidence was not sufficiently clear.
Michael Bowman, for Ms Collins, said “diligent” efforts were made by investigating gardaí to obtain technical material from three Irish computers in the case, but that the same level of detail could not be said to exist in respect of the US aspects of the inquiry.
This, Mr Bowman contended, resulted in “an evidential lacuna”.
Lawyers for Collins said they were also taking issue with the failure to disclose Teresa Engle as a “headline” witness before May 8th, 2008.
The court was told Ms Engle was “a bare-faced liar” who, in her direct evidence to the trial, indicated she “agreed to testify” in October 2007.
Brendan Grehan SC, for Collins, said his client’s attempt to overturn her solicitation conviction would focus on four main points, among them the “accomplice” evidence of Ms Engle, Eid’s second wife who was a convicted felon and awaiting sentence in the US at the time of the trial.
It would also focus on the treatment of evidence relating to the poison Ricin, the judge’s charge to the jury on the soliciting charge and what the court was told was “the Keating affair”.
Collins’s appeal against her conviction will resume this morning.