APPEAL Court President Ian Forte QC yesterday instructed former Resident Magistrate Norma Von Cork and her alleged co-conspirator, Radcliffe Orr, to return to court on April 29 to hear the outcome of the appeal against their convictions for conspiring to pervert the course of justice in the Bernal/Moore drug-smuggling case.

“Rather than rush to a conclusion, we will take time out (to make our decision), (so) your bails are extended to April 29,” said Justice Forte shortly after all the arguments for and against the conviction had been heard.

Justice Forte said he set the date bearing in mind the fact that the court had other heavier matters to consider which took priority over Von Cork’s.

Von Cork, who was convicted and sentenced to a year in prison in April 2000, along with Orr and three other men, has been on bail pending the outcome of the appeal, which is to be decided by appeal court judges Forte, Ransford Langrin and Seymour Panton.

In addition to Von Cork and Orr, businessman Christopher Moore, who has already served his sentence, and Morris Thompson, who is still in prison, are also appealing. The fourth man, Clive Ellis, has been missing since his arrest.

The three judges, who started hearing the appeal in January, have been asked by Von Cork’s lawyers to overturn the conviction on the basis that it was unreasonable having regard to the unreliable testimony of Von Cork’s orderly, Ron McLean.

McLean, who traded his testimony for the DPP’s promise not to prosecute him, told Resident Magistrate Almarie Haynes, who tried Von Cork, that the group had plotted to cast doubt on the 1995 convictions of Moore and his then friend, Brian Bernal.

The plot, according to McLean’s testimony, was to set up one Radcliff Orr to plead guilty in Von Cork’s Court to the drug-smuggling charges on which Moore and Bernal, son of Jamaica’s former ambassador to Washington, Richard Bernal, were convicted.

Moore and Bernal were convicted and sentenced to a year in jail after the authorities found 96 tins of ganja disguised as pineapple juice in the luggage that Bernal intended to take with him on a trip to the United States.

The following four years saw them appealing to the local appellate court, which dismissed the appeal. They took the case to the United Kingdom Privy Council, which also dismissed the appeal, but sent the case back to the local appellate court with instructions that they admit and consider fresh evidence adduced by Moore’s older brother, Dwight.

On hearing Dwight Moore’s evidence, which consisted of a story in which Christopher Moore had confessed to knowing that the tins were stuffed with ganja and duping Bernal into believing otherwise, the local appellate court concluded that he was lying and proceeded to confirm the sentences of both men.

It was around the time of the hearing of Dwight Moore’s evidence in 1997 that Orr turned up in Von Cork’s court in the parish of Manchester on an unrelated charge of possession of one pound of ganja, and claimed responsibility for packing with ganja, the tins which had been found years earlier in Bernal’s luggage.