APPEAL Court president, Ian Forte, yesterday seemed unimpressed by early arguments from R N A Henriques, who is seeking to overturn the conviction of Resident Magistrate Norma Von Cork for conspiring the course of justice in the mid-1990s Bernal/Moore marijuana case.

Justice Forte suggested that points raised by Henriques were peripheral and illogical, but with the hearing only in the first day and the defence lawyer having dealt with only two of the 13 grounds on which he has appealed legal analysts warned against reading too much in these early skirmishes.

Von Cork was a senior magistrate in Manchester when she was arrested in 1997, not long after she accepted a guilty plea from Radcliffe Orr, claiming responsibility for a 1995 attempt to smuggle to the United States 96 tins of ganja, disguised as pineapple juice.

Brian Bernal, the son of Jamaica’s former ambassador to the United States, Richard Bernal and a young businessman, Christopher Moore, had already been convicted of attempting to smuggle the drugs. Young Bernal claimed that he was given the drug to take back to the United States and suggested that he had been tricked by his former friend.

Von Cork, who was said to be friends with Moore, was convicted and sentenced to a year in jail in April 2000 on the conspiracy charge. Her action, prosecutors argued, was aimed at casting doubt on the convictions of Moore and Bernal.

Orr was said to have been promised $1 million for his guilty plea.

In his argument yesterday, Henriques, a Queen’s Counsel, essentially held that the circumstances surrounding his client’s conviction did not amount to conspiring to pervert the course of justice and that Ron McLean, Von Cork’s orderly and the prosecution’s main witness, was not credible.

McLean gave evidence for the Crown after bargaining with the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP), for a waiver of prosecution for his part in the conspiracy, and among his claim was that he had been instructed by Von Cork to telephone Chief Justice Lensley Wolfe for a reassurance that “everything would be cool” as far as the matter was concerned.

However, Henriques sought to poke holes in McLean’s testimony yesterday, arguing that the date on which McLean claimed to have made the call to Wolfe from the courthouse in Porus, Manchester turned out to be a public holiday.

“He claimed five times that he made the call on October 21 (National Heroes Day),” said Henriques.

But retorted Forte: “These differences that you are pointing out are surface matters that don’t go to the depth of the matter.”

It could be that McLean may just have got the date wrong, said Forte, who is hearing the appeal of Justices Ransford Langrin and Seymour Panton.

Forte appeared equally unimpressed by Henriques’ argument that the conspiracy charge was comical and could not be sustained as there was no way that Orr’s confession could have exonerated Bernal or Moore.

The duo’s conviction had already been upheld by the local Court of Appeal and Privy Council.

“You are making out that it is that simple, but there must be an opinion that (Orr’s confession) would assist Bernal and Moore,” said Justice Forte.

Although the Privy Council had upheld the Bernal/Moore conviction it remitted the case to the local appellate court for them to hear late evidence from Moore’s brother, Dwight Moore, which would have been favourable to Bernal.

The Jamaican appeal judges heard the evidence, but dismissed Dwight Moore’s testimony. Brian decided to serve his one-year jail term, but Moore went missing and could not be found for months.

A week later Orr turned up in the Mandeville Resident Magistrate Court, which was being presided over by Van Cork, to file his guilty plea. Van Cork had not long before come out of retirement for a second stint on the magistrate’s bench.

Van Cork, Orr and two policemen, Clive Ellis and Morris Thompson.

Ellis jumped bail before the trial but the others were convicted.