The Canadian lawyer accused of conspiring to fraudulently obtain his father's Bermuda status and by extension his own has been found guilty.

Robert William Martyn, 42, of Harrington Sound Road in Smith's stood grim-faced in the Supreme Court dock yesterday afternoon as the female jury foreperson delivered the unanimous verdict ? one reached after close to three hours of deliberation.

In the subdued aftermath of the verdict, defence attorney Saul Froomkin rose to ask for an extension of his client's bail ? a request which was not objected to by the Crown and to which Puisne Judge Carlisle Greaves readily acceded.

Martyn now faces up to two years in jail. He will discover his fate at the next arraignment session on June 1

However,understands that the sanction of extended jail time is not likely to be imposed, although Martyn ? who is currently employed as a lawyer at Westbury Limited and has no previous criminal convictions ? does face the possibility of deportation back to his native Canada at the behest of the Department of Immigration and the Minister of Home Affairs.

It is also understood Martyn's fraudulently obtained Bermuda status has already been revoked.

Surrounded by his legal team of Mr. Froomkin, Victoria Pearman and Charles Richardson, Martyn refused to comment on his conviction as he proceeded slowly, head bowed, away from the court precincts.

Crown counsel Paula Tyndale, meanwhile, would only say she was pleased with the outcome of the trial and that in her view, "the verdict was appropriate to the evidence."

However, an appeal against the conviction cannot be ruled out after Mr. Froomkin made strong objections to the judge's final summation to the jury.

As soon as the jury had retired to consider its verdict at about 1.15 p.m, Mr. Froomkin launched into an impassioned tirade against Mr. Greaves' address, arguing the summation had been heavily biased towards the prosecution.

"With the greatest of respect, my Lord, you have fallen into the trap laid by the prosecution and have basically asked the jury to convict the defendant," he said.

Mr. Greaves fought his corner, however, and the jury was not ultimately recalled for further instructions.

The complicated trial ? which lasted more than two weeks and required the examination of close to 40 documents ? centred on whether Martyn had entered into an agreement with his father, William Robert Martyn, to forge two documents in order deceive Immigration officials into accepting that the son's grandfather had been born in Bermuda in 1899.

The two forged documents in question, the father's birth certificate and the grandparent's marriage certificate, were submitted along with the father's status application in early 2000.

Once the father's right to status had been fraudulently established through a concocted Bermudian father, the door was then open for Martyn ? who had been in Bermuda on a work permit since the early 1990s ? to apply for status in his own right in September 2000.

The Crown maintained throughout the trial that as there was very little evidence the father William Martyn had spent a great deal of time in Bermuda, the real beneficiary of status being conveyed on the father was in fact the son.

The defence, however, contended their client had absolutely no knowledge of the falsehoods contained within the forged documents and had helped facilitate his father's application in good faith.

This assertion was undermined, however, by strong evidence to suggest that the father's false birth certificate had been forged using the son's birth certificate as "a template" ? a clear sign, said the Crown, that the son had been intimately involved in the whole scheme.