uphold Grant Forbes' unlawful wounding conviction.

Forbes, of Railway Trail, Sandys Parish, is the son of retired Deputy Police Commissioner Alex Forbes.

He was found guilty last year of slicing Derrick Seymour with a machete on July 4, 1993 causing a cut so deep it required 18 stitches to close.

At his conviction, Forbes was sentenced to six months in prison, but he was released from Supreme Court on $20,000 bail after his counsel, Mr. Kim White, sought leave to appeal the conviction to the Bermuda Court of Appeals.

Yesterday, Mr. Saul Froomkin, representing Forbes, said the seminal issue in the case was credibility, given that the main witnesses -- Forbes, Seymour and Carol Hollis -- were all linked.

Seymour and Hollis were former lovers and Hollis was also Forbes' girlfriend when the fight occurred.

Consequently, Mr. Froomkin said the jury needed proper direction so they could resolve competing versions of the events as they arose during the trial.

Mr. Froomkin said that Puisne Judge the Hon. Mr. Justice Ground did not explain how to resolve issues of doubt to the jury, and this was an essential error.

Additionally, Mr. Froomkin said directions regarding Forbes' legal right to the presumption of innocence was improperly set out.

Mr. Froomkin said the judge compounded the errors when he left the jury with the mistaken notion that Forbes' resistance during the fight with Seymour had to be "reasonable and necessary'', before if could be accepted that he acted legitimately in self defence.

"He left the jury in doubt about where the burden lay in establishing the conditions necessary for self defence,'' Mr. Froomkin said. "And he never instructed them on what they should do with it.'' Furthermore, Mr. Froomkin said the judge took away a key defence from Forbes when he did not advise the jury that there was no need for the accused to prove that he acted in self-defence.

Mr. Froomkin said the judge also put the jury under incredible pressure when he told the panel that they had to acquit Forbes of unlawfully wounding Seymour with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, before they could consider the lesser charge of simple wounding.

And this is, he said, clearly wrong in law.

Attorney General Mr. Elliott Mottley disagreed. He said the judge merely issued the standard exhortation to the jury to reach a verdict on the more serious charge.

"All the judge said was to try to reach a verdict on count one,'' Mr. Mottley said. "It is the manner in which this was done. There was no coercion.'' However, Mr. Justice Huggins yesterday asked whether it would have been better if the judge had told the jury that if they couldn't reach a decision, or if they found him not guilty of unlawful wounding, then they could consider the lesser charge.

Mr. Mottley said he was willing to concede that the phrasing the judge used did not give the jury a proper idea of their options.

But he said the language itself was not suggestive of any type of coercion.

The Appeal Court panel will deliver its decision this morning.