A judge who declared that testimony at a murder trial was making him "horny" has been censured by the Court of Appeal.

Carlisle Greaves, who retired last month as a junior Supreme Court judge, was presiding over a murder trial in Bermuda where Khyri Smith-Williams was accused of shooting dead Colford Ferguson. During the trial, one of the witnesses said that he shared some of the same sexual partners as Smith-Williams, prompting the judge to proclaim, “all this sex is beginning to get me horny.” 

The aroused judge suppressed his libido just enough to hear the remaining evidence, and later convicted Smith-Williams of murder, sentencing him to 35 years in prison. Smith-Williams' lawyer, Jerome Lynch, appealed the conviction on the basis that the judge behaved inappropriately by letting his inside voice out.


Judge

Greaves contemplates what to do in his retirement.


Lynch also argued that Greaves responded inappropriately to crude language used by one of the witnesses, who had referred to "f***ots".

At the Court of Appeal hearing, Judge Maurice Kay said Greaves was not at fault for the witnesses' slurs, as the Bermudian judge "has a very personal style, whereby he engages with witnesses, defendants, juries and advocates in an informal way, often using casual language", and, he added, "rich metaphors”.  

But he did draw the line at Greaves getting horny, ruling that his comment was "inappropriate and inimical to the dignity of court proceedings".

Kay rejected the appeal on the basis that the safety of the conviction had not been undermined. He also avoided the trap of announcing that any of it made him randy.

Greaves is not the first judge to be caught with his mind wandering to a seedy place during work time

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Comments

Anonymous 23 September 19 18:15

Always hard to progress complaints against judges. In England there was a recent case where the JCIO stonewalled allegations against a judge on the basis that the alleged misconduct was outside its remit because it related to the judge's decision making.

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