Attorney: The judgement is perverse

For a “judgement that’s perverse,” retired army captain, George Wehner, cannot let his conviction for battery go unchallenged, so he will be appealing.
That’s the word from his attorney, Charlesworth Tabor, who told OBSERVER media exclusively, he will fight the decision of Magistrate Ngaio Emanuel who heads the All Saints Magistrate’s Court.
Yesterday, the adjudicator delivered a decision finding Wehner guilty of battery under Section 13 of the Small Charges Act. But his co-accused, Swanston Lewis, was found not guilty. Wehner was reprimanded and discharged for the offence, meaning he would not serve jail time or have to pay a fine to the court or compensation to anyone.
Tabor said the challenge would focus only on Wehner as the verdict against Lewis is acceptable.
“We do not understand how Lewis is found not guilty but yet Wehner is found guilty. We think it’s a judgement that’s perverse and we are saying the whole issue of trespass, she [the magistrate] didn’t deal with that either. When you are asked to leave a premises and you don’t, you become a trespasser,” Tabor said.
He argued that Cuffy, a police officer who was actually, in his personal capacity, attending a meeting of the advocacy group, The Movement, on the night of September 9, 2016 when the incident occurred, refused to leave the meeting when instructed to do so.
Before being asked to leave the meeting, Cuffy was told to turn off his cellular phone because the group’s president, Algernon “Serpent” Watts, had indicated this must be done because he had something important to say at the meeting but did not want it recorded.
Tabor said that the most important “limb” of the argument for the defence was ignored by the court. That “limb,” he said, was the fact that Cuffy was asked to leave a meeting and he refused to comply. At the trial, it was said that although the meetings of The Movement are public for the purposes of recruiting new members, they were still very much private, and people have been asked to leave in the past, and they have complied.
The meetings are conducted at Sea Breeze Reception Hall which the group rents and controls during the rental period.
 
(More in today’s Daily Observer)