FORMER RESIDENT Magistrate Norma Von Cork and Radcliffe Orr, labourer, of Trench Town, Kingston 12, were yesterday taken into custody, after the Court of Appeal ruled that they should each serve a 12-month prison sentence for conspiracy to pervert the course of public justice.
Mrs. Von Cork, in her early 60s, is the first judge to be convicted of an offence while serving on the Bench. She had retired from the Bench and was on contract when the offence took place. She resigned from the Bench shortly before she was arrested and charged in 1998.
Gleaner sources said yesterday that prisoners at the women's prison at Fort Augusta, St. Catherine, where Mrs. Von Cork was taken, were not pleased to see her. Some of the women prisoners said she was the one who sentenced them and vowed to give her a "hard time".
Mrs. Von Cork told The Gleaner after she lost her appeal that she was considering the possibility of taking her case to the United Kingdom Privy Council, but she would have to discuss the matter with her lawyers.
"The case is one of exceptional public importance," says Delano Harrison, Q.C., a member of the defence team. He said the lawyers in the case were going to meet with R. N. A. Henriques, Q.C., who led the defence team, to discuss the matter with a view to have the case decided by the Privy Council.
Mr. Harrison also added that the issues raised in grounds one and two of the appeal were serious legal issues as to "when justice begins and when it ends."
Some of Mrs. Von Cork's friends in the legal profession turned up yesterday and consoled her, while she was in the holding area at the Supreme Court awaiting transportation to prison. Mrs. Von Cork sobbed for a short while but regained her composure for most of the day.
Von Cork and Orr were convicted on April 28, 2000 along with Constable Morris Thompson, Christopher Moore, a 27-year-old Kingston businessman, Radcliffe Orr, labourer, of Trench Town, Kingston 12 and Clive Ellis, labourer, of Thompson Pen, St. Catherine. Ellis, who was on bail, did not attend court for his trial and was tried and convicted in his absence. He is still at large.
The main witness for the prosecution was Ron McLean, who was Mrs. Von Cork's orderly at the time the offence was committed.
The prosecution led evidence that they hatched a plot to have Orr plead guilty to the offences of possession of ganja to which Christopher Moore and Brian Bernal, an architecture student, were convicted of in 1995.
Orr pleaded guilty in the Mandeville Resident Magistrate's Court in October 1997 to the ganja charges and Von Cork sentenced him to nine months imprisonment. Orr was offered $1 million to plead guilty to the offence.
Resident Magistrate Almarie Haynes found that Orr and her co-convicts hatched the plot in order to cast doubt on the validity of the convictions of Moore and Bernal.
Henriques had asked the court to find that the offence for which they were convicted was not known in law. He argued that the Resident Magistrate erred in her ruling, because the main witness for the Crown was not a witness of truth.
Bryan Sykes, Acting Senior Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions, asked the court to find that McLean's evidence was corroborated.
Mr. Sykes said that there was no discrepancy in the evidence which McLean gave under oath. Mr. Sykes, in reviewing the evidence, said that when Orr's lawyer objected to the case being disposed of in October, 1997, Von Cork had said the lawyer could go on talking all he wanted, the sentence was nine months imprisonment.
Von Cork and Orr were on bail awaiting the outcome of their appeal. Thompson and Moore served their sentences but were also appealing against their convictions but their appeals were also dismissed yesterday.
Ian Forte, president of the Court of Appeal, Mr. Justice Ransford Langrin and Mr. Justice Seymour Panton heard the appeal. The court will give its reasons in writing on May 13.
RM in for a 'hard time'
