Prosecutors yesterday insisted that nothing improper was done during Kirk Roberts' drug importation conspiracy trial last year.

Mr. Roberts' lawyers, Ed Bailey and Frank Phipps, QC had argued that the Crown had denied their client a fair trial by not disclosing evidence when requested - including the circumstances behind an immunity deal granted to a key witness - admitted drug runner Heinz Golembeck.

Yesterday they also told the Court of Appeal that the judge misdirected the jury at the end of the trial last summer by not pointing out that much of the evidence they had heard could be interpreted in a way favourable to their client.

Mr. Phipps was also able to argue that trial judge Norma Wade-Miller had resurrected a now abandoned principle of law that accomplices cannot corroborate each other but failed to direct the jury accordingly.

But the lawyers appeared to have lost an argument that Roberts' outburst when arrested should not been admitted as evidence in court.

The pair have asked the court to quash the conviction which led to Roberts being sentenced to 10 years in prison. "This is an incomplete direction and it was dangerous," said Mr. Bailey.

"It was misleading to the jury and therefore it was unsafe."

Principal Crown counsel Lloyd Rayney pointed out that much of the evidence requested was disclosed by the time the trial took place and other evidence believed by the defence to exist did not in fact exist.

He quoted from the court record to show that a statement given by Golembeck to the Police in March, 2001 was used in cross examination by Mark Pettingill, Roberts' lawyer at the time, refuting claims that the evidence was not disclosed.

"He (Pettingill) has it. He's armed with it and at one point, the witness even says `if it's written then I said it'," Mr. Rayney told the court.

"Much time has been taken up arguing that it has not been disclosed when in fact it has been disclosed."

Mr. Pettingill is not involved in the appeal proceedings which started on Monday.

Mr. Bailey had pointed to Golembeck's March, 2001 statement to the Bermuda Police in the Bahamas as a critical piece of evidence needed for the defence to establish the circumstances behind the immunity deal which was negotiated two years later and played a major role in the trial.

The March, 2001 meetings had nothing to do with the conspiracy for which Roberts was found guilty of, Mr. Rayney said.

"A statement was taken but that matter related to his alleged previous drug activity and the evidence was of his various other involvements," he said.

The defence's suggestion during the trial that Golembeck was an agent of the authorities rather than a co-conspirator who had reformed, has been picked up by Roberts' new lawyers for the current proceedings who also argue that he was a suspect witness and that the trial judge misdirected the jury on how to assess his testimony.

Other evidence sought by the defence such as Police notes on meetings between the Police and Golembeck did not exist, Mr. Rayney said.

And statements arising from Golembeck's subsequent meetings with Police were served on the defence, he insisted.

And on complaints that the operational instructions to Police were not disclosed, Mr. Rayney said that the Crown had requested, and was granted, a court order saying that disclosure of that evidence was contrary to the public interest.

When arrested, Roberts was alleged to have said, "You arrested my wife and now you arrest me again. You ain't even got the drugs - you arrest me without the drugs. I've been doing this for 20 years. You young jokers don't know what you're doing."

His lawyers argued that the outburst should not have been admitted as evidence, but the prosecution replied that there had been no objection when it was introduced in the trial and that Mr. Pettingill had allowed the statement in as a defence tactic which backfired.

"The defence for its own tactical reason did not object and that being the case should not be allowed to complain on appeal that the evidence was allowed," he said. And the prosecutor pointed out that Roberts' comments that he had "been doing this for 20 years" was not the incriminating part of his outburst, as interpreted by his lawyers, but the fact that he appeared to have known that the drugs had not been found. "Golembeck gave evidence two days after his (first) arrest that Roberts spoke to him and told him the drugs were safe," Mr. Rayney said. "And as a matter of fact the drugs were not found. Mr. Roberts and his band managed to smuggle in the cannabis with a considerable amount of money and the police never recovered it. And that statement is from the person who committed the crime and knows well that the police has not got the drugs."

Roberts, 40, of West Side Road, Sandys, was handed a 10-year prison sentence after being convicted last year of conspiring, with Vincentian Alphonso Holder and unspecified others, to import 200 pounds of marijuana into Bermuda. Holder, who received a four-year sentence for his role in the conspiracy, is relying almost entirely on Roberts' grounds of appeal in his own effort to quash his conviction. But he is separately represented by Peter Farge.