ERROR RG P4 25.6.1997 A story in yesterday's paper incorrectly stated the Court of Appeal was headed by Chief Justice Austin Wood. The President of the Court of Appeal is Sir James Astwood.

Disgraced lawyer Charles Vaucrosson yesterday launched a bid in the Appeal Court to clear his name.

Jamaican barrister Frank Phipps QC told a three-judge appeal panel headed by Chief Justice Austin Wood that Vaucrosson should never have been charged with stealing cash from the estate of journalist Percy Ball, who died in 1987.

He said there had been no evidence at the original trial that Vaucrosson himself had authorised money to be taken from the estate.

And he claimed Crown witnesses, including the former financial controller at Vaucrosson's law firm, were "suspect'' -- but that the trial judge failed to give special directions to the jury on their evidence.

Vaucrosson was convicted in December, 1995 of eight counts of stealing almost $400,000 from the beneficiaries of the late Mr. Ball's estate and sentenced to two years in jail in January this year. He was paroled after serving a year of his sentence.

A Supreme Court jury found that Vaucrosson, then 61, was the moving force and the sole benefactor of a series of withdrawals from the account in 1991.

The jury accepted that Vaucrosson used the cash to pay personal debts, including $31,000 owed to staff, $151,000 to pay off a mortgage owed to Lois Perinchief and further $15,000-plus owed to another woman.

But Mr. Phipps said the nature of the transactions fell outside the definition of "money'' according to the Criminal Code.

He added: "It was rather a thing in action where the relationship of debtor and creditor had arisen and that was the property in which the beneficiaries had interest.

"The property was not property capable of being stolen within the terms of the code.'' And he said: "Although we talk about people having money in the bank, the only people who have money in the bank is the banker.'' He added that Mr. Vaucrosson as head of his firm admitted responsibility for the money -- but not criminality.

Mr. Phipps added another member of the firm had administered the estate and a financial controller and staff had also been in place.

"There was no clear evidence as to who instructed these cheques to be drawn on the client account,'' he said.

And he added other evidence as to the character of Mr. Vaucrosson should not have been admissible.

English Crown Counsel Michael Pert QC, however, told the three judges, headed by Chief Justice Austin Ward: "There came a time when Mr. Vaucrosson had the conduct of the estate, not one of his lawyers.'' And he said that going outside the Bermuda Criminal Code was only permissible when the meaning was not clear -- which he insisted it was.

Mr. Pert said the Code covered "anything which is included in money.'' He added that avoided a difficulty in English law about the difference between money and a cheque.

Mr. Pert said: "The money which is alleged is reflected -- and properly reflected -- in the cheques to which counts one to eight refer.

"Money includes cheques -- an indictment specifying money includes all forms of money.'' The Appeal Court reserved judgment in the case until a later date.