DAY two of Norma Von Cork’s appeal against her conviction for conspiring to pervert the course of justice by casting doubt on the 1995 drug-smuggling convictions of Brian Bernal and businessman Christopher Moore, yesterday ended in a virtual deadlock of opinions regarding the bonafides of the charge for which the former resident magistrate was sentenced to a year in prison.

However, when the appeal continues today, R N A Henriques QC, the leader of Von Cork’s legal team, will continue to cite cases in support of his contention that neither Von Cork nor the four men with whom she was convicted did anything that could justify the charge which is described as ‘novel and unprecedented’ in the skeletal arguments against the conviction.

Von Cork, a woman of some 60 years, and the four men — Radcliffe Orr, Christopher Moore, Constable Morris Thompson and Clive Ellis — were convicted in April 2000 and sentenced each to a year in prison for setting up Orr to claim responsibility for attempting to smuggle the illegal drug, marijuana, for which Moore and Bernal, the son of Jamaica’s former ambassador to Washington D C, were convicted.

She was granted bail pending the outcome of the appeal, which is also being argued on behalf of her fellow-convicts.

The appeal, which started on Monday, is, according to the lawyers involved, expected to run over into next week.

Between now and then, Henriques, Patrick Bailey, Norma Linton QC and George Soutar will try to convince the court that contrary to the testimony that Von Cork’s orderly, Ron McLean, gave in return for a nolle prosequi exempting him from prosecution, their clients are innocent.

McLean’s testimony was that he, Von Cork and the others plotted to have Orr brought to her court to plead guilty to conspiring with Bernal’s younger brother to smuggle 96 tins of ganja, disguised as pineapple juice, out of the country.

Bernal’s younger brother had also been arrested after the police found the ganja in his big brother’s luggage, but the charges against him were subsequently dropped.

Yesterday, Henriques argued that according to established case law, a charge of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice in the Von Cork matter was irrelevant as Orr’s guilty plea in and of itself could not have resulted in the risk of the reversal of the Bernal/Moore convictions.

“If they had taken further steps (like making an application to use Orr’s guilty plea as a ground for the reversal of the convictions…. then…,” he said.

However, Appeal Court president, Justice Ian Forte QC, who is hearing the appeal along with justices Seymour Panton and Ransford Langrin, continued to press the point he raised at the beginning of the appeal.

“I can’t let you off by saying that it is simply that someone has pleaded guilty to an offence which was already charged and two persons convicted. I am dealing with facts. You just want to skim over it by saying the only act was that someone pleaded guilty. I’d like you to face up to it. The prosecution is saying that it is much more than that. The prosecution is saying that these people got together to create a scenario where (Orr) established himself as responsible for (what happened in the Bernal/Moore case). (The prosecution is saying) that they inveigled him for a reward for an offence which all of them knew he had not committed,” the judge said.