A judge in Bermuda has been criticised by the British Court of Appeals for telling a murder trial he was getting ‘horny’ because of the amount of sex mentioned in the case.
Carlisle Greaves, who served until last month as a junior judge in the British overseas territory, made the outrageous remark while a witness gave crucial evidence during the trial.
The murder trial, which saw Khyri Smith-Williams convicted of slaying Colford Ferguson, was taken to the Court of Appeal when defense attorney Jerome Lynch demanded a retrial, claiming the judge had behaved inappropriately.
The Court of Appeal ultimately rejected the calls but Appeal judge Sir Maurice Kay said the court could not condone the lewd comments.
Mr Justice Kay said: ‘In particular, his comment “all this sex is beginning to get me horny” was inappropriate and inimical to the dignity of court proceedings.
‘Mr Lynch was justified in criticising it. However, I do not believe that it damaged the defence or had the potential to undermine the safety of the conviction.’
Smith-Williams was sentenced to serve at least 35 years in prison last October, after he was found guilty of the murder by a majority verdict.
Mr Ferguson, a 29-year-old father of one, was shot dead in February 2011, as he worked on a house in Somerset, Bermuda – which is a cluster of 181 islands in the North Atlantic usually referred to in the collective.
Troy Harris, a witness for the Crown, told the court that Smith-Williams confessed his involvement in the killing to him and admitted that he had driven the getaway motorbike.
He said Smith-Williams also told him that Rasheed Muhammad had pulled the trigger and that Mr. Ferguson was not the intended target.
Smith-Williams launched an appeal against his conviction, which was heard in June.
In the hearing, Mr Lynch criticised Mr Justice Greaves’s handling of the case, particularly his behaviour during Mr Harris’s evidence.
He argued that the judge had done little to rein in the witness’s use of vulgar language and that the ‘tacit approval’ of the behaviour had lent it credibility.
In transcripts presented to the Court of Appeal, Mr Harris cursed repeatedly, called Mr Muhammad a f****t and made repeated references to ‘f***ing p***y’.
But the higher court found Mr Justice Greaves’s response to the unsavoury language was not prejudicial.
Mr Justice Kay wrote: ‘Anybody familiar with serious criminal trials, in this jurisdiction in recent years, knows the judge has a very personal style, whereby he engages with witnesses, defendants, juries and advocates in an informal way, often using casual language and rich metaphors.
‘In relation to Harris, it was important that the judge should facilitate his evidence, whatever it turned out to be.
‘If he took the view, and I suspect he did, that the best course was to let the witness have his say, subject to the rules of evidence, rather than seek to inhibit him, it seems to me that that was an exercise of judgment which was open to him.’
(Source: dailymail.co.uk)
