Lawyers for champion powerboat racer and boatwright Kirk Roberts yesterday began legal arguments aimed at quashing his drug importation conspiracy conviction.

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.

His lawyers - Franks Phipps, QC and Ed Bailey - yesterday argued that Roberts was denied the right to a full hearing because the Director of Public Prosecutions did not fully disclose the circumstances behind an immunity deal granted to a key witness, admitted drug runner Heinz Golombeck.

The three Court of Appeal judges heard that the Crown discontinued a preliminary inquiry into the allegations and instead asked Chief Justice Austin Ward to indict Roberts when his lawyers at the time began pressing for full disclosure on the deal made with Golombeck.

"The prosecution frustrated the defence's request for disclosure," and violated the "sacred principle" of fairness, Mr. Phipps said.

"To that principle all others must yield, including administrative convenience. And those charged with the responsibility for maintaining law and order must scrupulously adhere to that principle."

He said the defence had been trying to establish whether Golombeck was a police informant or a "reformed and penitent drug smuggler".

The answer to that question was "most relevant" to the defence, he said.

"In order to avoid disclosure those proceedings were terminated."

Both lawyers argued Mr. Justice Ward had been wrong to hear a challenge to his decision to grant a voluntary bill of indictment which allowed the Supreme Court trial to go ahead.

During the trial, Mark Pettingill, Roberts' lawyer at the time, said that it was clear that Golembeck was a major player in the conspiracy who had made a deal to save his own skin.

Golembeck told the court he voluntarily approached US drug enforcement agents in Barbados and told them everything of his many years of Caribbean drug running.

DEA agents directed Bermuda Police to Golembeck and he turned evidence on Roberts and Holder in exchange for immunity, the jury heard during the trial last summer.

Mr. Pettingill argued that the entire operation was geared to "get Kirk Roberts" whom Police had been watching for many years.

Yesterday Appeals Court president Sir James Astwood questioned whether any undisclosed information would have had any material impact on the case.

But the lawyers insisted that Roberts was entitled to full disclosure of the Golembeck immunity deal at the preliminary inquiry stage.

Mr. Bailey said the Bermuda Police had been meeting with Golombeck in the Bahamas for almost two years before the deal was struck and the details of their communications would have established for the defence whether "there was another conspiracy being hatched that was different from what was being alleged".

But the Crown only disclosed the results of the Police's later meetings with Golembeck, despite being asked to show other materials that must have existed, he said.

"This is a grave indictment against the Bermuda Police - that they are meeting an individual in the Bahamas and not making notes," Mr. Bailey said. "They are accountable to someone and they must make a report."

"The magistrate had decided that there should be disclosure about Golembeck," said Mr. Phipps. "Faced with that the Crown discontinued the proceedings and went for a voluntary bill of indictment."

"There has been a miscarriage of justice. Appellant Roberts has been deprived of a fair hearing and in all the circumstances the conviction should be quashed," Mr. Phipps added. Senior Crown counsel Lloyd Rayney and Crown counsel Shade Subair appear for the Crown.

The case continues today.

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