THE COURT of Criminal Appeal has fixed a date in March for the hearing of the appeal by Sharon Collins against her conviction for soliciting another man to kill her partner and his two sons.
Mr Justice Adrian Hardiman yesterday fixed March 11th for the hearing of separate appeals against their convictions by Collins and her co-accused Essam Eid (54), an Egyptian national with a Las Vegas address who worked as a poker dealer.
Collins (46), Kildysart Road, Ennis, Co Clare, was found guilty in July 2008 of soliciting Eid to kill PJ, Robert and Niall Howard in 2006.
She was also found guilty on three counts of conspiring to kill the three men.
Eid was found guilty of demanding €100,000 from Robert Howard on September 26th, 2006, and of handling items stolen from the Howard family business the previous night.
Collins, who was accused of using the cyber name lyingeyes98 to hire a hitman on the internet, and Eid, were both jailed for six years by Mr Justice Roderick Murphy at the Central Criminal Court.
During the 32-day trial, the prosecution had argued that Collins had started looking for a hitman on the internet after Mr Howard refused to marry her.
Prior to this she obtained a Mexican marriage certificate from a website called proxymarriages. com which she used to obtain an Irish passport in the name Sharon Howard.
A large part of the prosecution’s case against both Collins and Eid was made up of e-mails found on the hard drives of computers seized from the homes of both Collins and Eid.