The Court of Criminal Appeal has dismissed Carol Hawkins’s appeal against her convictions for 181 counts of stealing cheques worth about €2.8 million from musician Adam Clayton. The court concluded there was sufficient evidence for the jury to convict. Its judgment addresses the conviction appeal and does not state that the court separately reviewed or changed the seven-year sentence imposed after trial.
Hawkins was found guilty following an 18-day trial in the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court. The offences concerned cheques drawn between 2006 and 2008 on two accounts belonging to Clayton: 84 counts related to the Danesmoate Farm account and 97 to the Fitzwilliam account. She was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment on 6 July 2012.
The judgment said Hawkins had been given signing rights to the accounts to pay household expenses and other personal outgoings Clayton directed her to meet. She and her husband were paid about €4,000 a month for their work at his home. The prosecution presented evidence that cheques were paid into Hawkins’s accounts and that the money was used for expenses including horse racing, credit cards, a car and a New York apartment. Those were prosecution evidence and jury-trial matters, not fresh findings made in the appeal judgment.
The court rejected Hawkins’s arguments that disclosure had been inadequate, that Clayton should have been excluded from parts of the trial while a forensic accountant testified, and that production orders for financial records were improperly obtained. It also rejected challenges to leading questions, the admission of evidence about a 2008 meeting in France, and the proof linking documentary exhibits to the charges.
The court held that the evidence of the France meeting was relevant to the prosecution case about the limits on Hawkins’s authority. Clayton testified that Hawkins told him she had booked flights for herself to visit her children using his account and estimated the amount at €13,000 to €15,000. A letter quoted in the judgment recorded an accountant’s reported deficit of €13,585.19 and an arrangement for repayment. The appeal court found that this background evidence could help the jury assess whether the charged spending was authorised.
On the legal basis of the charges, the court said theft under section 4 of the Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offences) Act 2001 could be complete when a person dishonestly writes a cheque without authority, even if the account is not ultimately debited. It found that section 4 was an appropriate charge and that the trial judge’s direction to the jury was sound. The court therefore dismissed the conviction appeal.