DEFENCE attorney, R N A Henriques Q C, has blasted the resident magistrate who last year convicted her former colleague, Norma Von Cork, for conspiring to pervert the course of justice in the case that saw Brian Bernal, the son of Richard Bernal, Jamaica’s former ambassador to Washington D C, and his one-time friend, Christopher Moore, jailed for drug smuggling.

“The RM demonstrated a lack of understanding of the case, placed sinister inferences on evidence that was neutral, made findings that were rationalisations of lies (told by the prosecution’s main witness) and permitted inadmissible evidence,” said Henriques in a court document he filed on Monday.

The document, which outlined 13 grounds of appeal against the conviction which shamed the judiciary last April, will form the platform on which Henriques and the other lawyers representing the men with whom Von Cork was convicted, will challenge the conviction next week.

Appeal Court president, Justice Ian Forte and his colleagues, justices Ransford Langrin and Seymour Panton, are scheduled to hear the appeal and consequentially determine whether or not Von Cork is to serve the 12-month prison sentence that Resident Magistrate Almarie Haynes imposed on her.

Von Cork was arrested in 1997, shortly after she accepted a guilty plea from one Radcliff Orr who claimed in her court that he was responsible for attempting in 1995 to smuggle 96 tins of ganja disguised as pineapple juice out of the island.

The rational for Von Cork’s actions was, according to government prosecutors, to cast doubt on the Bernal/Moore convictions which had been upheld by the court of appeal. The United Kingdom Privy Council dismissed the appeal but remitted the case to the local appellate court with instructions that the judges there admit fresh evidence adduced by Moore’s brother, Dwight.

On hearing the evidence, the court dismissed Dwight as an outright liar and reaffirmed the convictions, at which point Bernal went to jail to serve his year, while Moore went missing.

However, less than a week later, Orr turned up in the Mandeville RM Court and confessed to Von Cork, who had come out of retirement to do a stint on the bench.

The investigation that her acceptance of the guilty plea and consequential imposition of a nine-month prison sentence on Orr also led to the arrest of Orr and two policemen who were accused of being in on the scheme. Moore was also captured.

One of the policemen, Clive Ellis, jumped bail just before the trial started. The other, Morris Thompson, faced the trial which culminated in the convictions of all four.