Since a Justice of the Peace (JP) was jailed in May for three months for negligence contrary to common-law, there has been controversy in the legal profession as to whether such an offence exists in criminal law.

Howard Charvis, 56, Justice of the Peace and accountant of Linstead, St Catherine, was sentenced in the Spanish Town Resident Magistrate's Court for the offence.

He is appealing against his conviction and sentence. Last Thursday, attorney-at-law Ravil Golding made a bail application for Charvis at the Court of Appeal.

Unknown law

Golding, who was retained after Charvis was jailed, submitted that the resident magistrate fell into error when she sentenced Charvis for negligence contrary to common law because such an offence was unknown and was non-existent in law.

Charvis said in court documents filed last week that he was not pleaded and he had not given attorney-at-law Sean Kinghorn, who was representing him, any authority to enter a plea on his behalf.

Justice Mahadev Dukharan granted Charvis bail in the sum of $50,000 with a surety pending the outcome of his appeal. A date is to be set for the hearing of his appeal.

Resident Magistrate Lorna Errar had ordered the police to carry out investigations after Charvis went to court on April 1 to testify as a Crown witness in a fraud case.

Separate certification

The charges against Charvis stemmed from his certification of two photographs at different times in January this year for a woman to get hurricane relief funds. The certification on the photographs had different names.

Charvis said, in the documents filed, that he had known the woman for about four years as Miss P. She sold sweets and cigarettes in the vicinity of his office.

On the first occasion, on January 8, that he certified the photograph, the woman said her name was Peggy Martin. Some three weeks later, the woman approached him and told him that she had lost the photograph which he had certified.

Contacted the police

She asked him to certify another photograph and she told him that her name was Princess Brown.

He said on the second occasion that he signed, he did not recall the name she had told him on the first occasion, because at the time his son had been killed in a motor vehicle accident and he was distraught and distressed.

He said, when he was contacted by the Social Development Commission and told that the woman had used the signed photographs and, allegedly, collected two cheques in the sum of $20,000 each, he immediately contacted the Spanish Town Police.

The woman pleaded guilty to fraud charges on April 1.