A three-day hearing over a longstanding corruption case against former Premier Ewart Brown came to a close yesterday.

Dr Brown’s team argued that the charges should be dismissed under the Bermuda Constitution as well as common law — countering the Department of Public Prosecution’s claim that they did not make the right applications for these arguments.

Jerome Lynch KC said yesterday that legislation as recent as 2015 was made to permit “Section 15” constitutional applications to be applied “without the need for an originating summons and with reduced formality”.

He said this allowed the legal team to argue on the grounds of constitutional rights and an abuse of process through the same application.

Mr Lynch further emphasised that, beyond delays, the issue at hand was the very fairness of the trial.

The former Progressive Labour Party leader has been accused of 13 counts of corruption, including five related to agreements with US medical facility Lahey Clinic between 2001 and 2010.

The remaining eight charges relate to allegations of corruptly obtaining donations between 2007 and 2010.

During the three-day abuse of process case this week, Dr Brown applied to have his case dismissed over an inability to get a speedy trail and a fair trail, given the publicity.

Although the DPP said on Tuesday that the case could not be dismissed on constitutional grounds through an abuse of process application, Mr Lynch said that the DPP had given conflicting directions on how to proceed.

He explained: “When Dr Brown files an application for a permanent stay of the criminal proceedings by way of an originating summons under Order 114, the DPP says it should be under Section 476G.

“When a constitutional application is made under Section 476G like now, the DPP says it should be dealt with by way of an originating summons.”

Mr Lynch added: “The director cannot, as they say, suck and blow at the same time.”

However, Adley Duncan, the Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions, representing the Crown, called the assertions “revisionism and gaslighting”.

He explained that the opening paragraph for Dr Brown’s initial application argued that the charges should stay on file because of an abuse of process.

Mr Duncan said: “When the applicant in paragraph six says they are making the application for a stay based on the inherent jurisdiction, relying on both the common law and the constitution, the constitutional provisions were ... supportive of the application to stay based on abuse of process.”

He added: “At all times, prior to Monday of this week, this was an abuse of process application supported by constitutional principals, which were secondary and subordinate to the primary and, in fact, only application.”

Mr Duncan said that any application under constitutional grounds would have operated under different rules.

He said that constitutional applications would require the applicant to provide evidence of any damages.

He added that affidavits would have had to be filed, which had not been done.

Mr Duncan further said that publicity would have always played a factor as “there’s nobody in this island who does not have an opinion on Dr Brown”.

He added that Dr Brown had a hand in the trial’s publicity.

Martin Forde, King’s Counsel, who presided over the hearing, will give a ruling at a later date.

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