Lawyer’s appeal starts

As attorney-at-law Vonda Pile’s appeal case commenced Friday, her lawyer made a number of arguments including the prejudice to his client from the inclusion of a money laundering case.

QC Andrew Pilgrim’s submissions also addressed the direction given on evidence of good character along with issues regarding the civil suit and letters of testamentary. He called for the case to be retried.

On June 5, Pile was found guilty by a 7-2 majority verdict of stealing $191,416.39 (US$96,008.22) from former client Anstey King between April 29, 2009, and October 26, 2010. Pile was sentenced to three years in prison by Justice Pamela Beckles; the appeal is against her conviction and sentence.

Addressing Acting Chief Justice Rajendra Narine and Justices of Appeal Francis Belle and Jefferson Cumberbatch, Pilgrim asked? “Why was the money laundering charge there at all? If it was right to bring that charge one would have to show a reason why,” he suggested.

He said the “very sound of it is dangerous”.

“From the time somebody hears that you are, not only charged with theft but with money laundering, it sounds very serious and my experience has told me that this charge is not proffered in all cases of this kind. Indeed most of the cases in which an attorney is charged, it is much more simplistic than this one, in the sense that typically there is an allegation that someone brought a property or sought to buy a property, paid in their money to the attorney and never got any land, never got any money back and this long period of time elapsed and people get charge, that is the typical scenario that we’ve been dealing with,” he argued.

Money laundering, according to the lawyer, raised a genuine concern that “ill gotten money was being used for further criminal behavior”.

“How come in this case you are bringing this charge with no evidence on how this money was used; no evidence to how this money was disposed of?”

He asked the court to find that the prejudice that could “devolve unto Ms Pile, even though she was found not guilty, is significant or could be significant in circumstances where the Crown really had nothing to establish this charge in terms of how this money was disposed of”.

He challenged whether the crown could prove a trend in such charges being used in all similar cases of theft; reiterating that prejudice appeared from mere presence of the charge.

“The prejudice is more obvious in a situation where you charge a person with this second charge knowing that they would suffer a detriment as a result- a readily identifiable and quantifiable prejudice. What has happened is that these decisions are made, willy nilly, and the risk to the accused is extremely significant,” he argued.

Pilgrim said he did not want the court to “underrate that when the jury hears that charge read, it is something that they can take very seriously”.

“The fact that one is found not guilty on one, does not mean that it did not affect the mind of the jury negatively,” he said.

“But the breath of the definition of money laundering leaves that discretion to the prosecution doesn’t it,” Judge Cumberbatch added.

“Yes, but one has to beg the question when you are seeing several other people, in what appear to be circumstances that I cannot distinguish from Pile’s case, I still have to ask this question – how come Ms Pile still has this charge? Several other attorneys in similar situations don’t, I hope some others do, but the only one I know for sure that has the charge is Ms Pile,” Pilgrim responded.

Pilgrim questioned whether there was a policy in the Director of Public Prosecutions’ department which suggested that the inclusion of the charge with theft matters was being applied across the board.

Principal Crown Counsel Krystal Delaney, in her response, simply referred to the fact that Pile was found not guilty and called the argument “a moot point”.

She drew attention to convicted lawyer, Cheraine Parris’ case and two other cases before the court which included attorneys charged with theft and money laundering.

The decision was reserved.