Bermuda’s head prosecutor told the Court of Appeal that assault charges did not taint the 2023 murder trial of jailed lawyer Kamal Worrell.

While counsel for Worrell argued this week that jurors should have heard evidence that Chavelle Dillon-Burgess had told Magistrates’ Court she made up the allegations, Cindy Clarke, the Director of Public Prosecutions, said the jury had been “well aware” of that fact.

She noted that Worrell had himself told the jury that Ms Dillon-Burgess said she made false statements, and that he believed he would have been acquitted of the charges had the Crown not paused its prosecution.

Ms Clarke added: “They knew she had given witness statements, withdrawn statements made to testify in court and withdrew that evidence. All of that was before the jury.”

She said that the Supreme Court trial had been a continuation of the Magistrates’ Court matter, not a new matter, noting that the Crown had filed a nolle prosequi — a legal notice stating that it intended to indefinitely adjourn a prosecution — before it closed its case.

Ms Clarke said that the murder case was joined to the assault case to bring all of the charges to the higher court.

She added that at one stage Worrell indicated that he intended to apply to separate the matters on the basis that it would be an abuse, which she said demonstrated he was aware there was an application he could make.

Worrell was found guilty in January 2024 of murdering Ms Dillon-Burgess, the mother of his child, on an unknown date between April 10 and June 11, 2020.

Ms Dillon-Burgess was reported missing by her family on April 30, 2020, and has still not been found despite island-wide searches.

Worrell maintained his innocence, telling the Supreme Court during his trial that Ms Dillon-Burgess had walked out of the home that they shared with their child after an argument on April 11, 2020.

He said she briefly returned days later only to collect personal items, but he had not seen her since.

Worrell claimed that he had never acted violently towards Ms Dillon-Burgess and had only ever acted to defend himself when she lashed out at him.

However, prosecutors suggested that Worrell felt as though Ms Dillon-Burgess was ruining his career with her allegations of violence and urged the jury to consider his actions before and after her disappearance.

A jury found Worrell guilty of murdering Ms Dillon-Burgess by a majority verdict, further convicting him of six counts of common assault by unanimous verdict and one count by majority verdict.

Worrell, who filed an appeal against his conviction before his sentencing, was sentenced to life behind bars and ordered to serve at least 27 years before becoming eligible for parole.

He was further sentenced to six months behind bars for the assault charges, with all of the sentences ordered to run concurrently.

Richard Horseman, counsel for Worrell, argued this week that the assault charges had tainted the murder trial, and that the judge should have been shown Ms Dillon-Burgess’s testimony in the Magistrates’ Court trial in which she said her complaints were false.

He also complained about the late disclosure of phone records and directions given by Puisne Judge Juan Wolffe.

While Mr Horseman said Mr Justice Wolffe should have given the jury directions on provocation, Ms Clarke said that there had been no evidence of provocation in the trial as Worrell had wholly denied causing the death of Ms Dillon-Burgess.

She said: “He got up and said he was not acting in self-defence, he was not acting on provocation.”

Ms Clarke argued that putting a provocation direction to the jury in that context would only have invited them to speculate.

She accepted that the judge could have provided more “fulsome” directions to the jury on the subject of manslaughter, but said that proper directions on both murder and manslaughter were given.

On the subject of the late disclosure of phone records, Ms Clarke said the delay was caused because the Crown itself did not have them, but she said they were provided before the trial began and Worrell was given an adjournment to go through the records.

She said: “The question the court must consider is, what are the actual consequences of any delay?”

The Court of Appeal reserved its judgment until a later date.

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