Lawyer Vieira recalls ‘crisis of conscience’

“When the second time came around I was very disappointed and upset,” the Independent Senator told Newsday yesterday. “I refused the brief.”

This was just about two years later. I mean I had done my job the first time around and represented him to the best of my ability. But I had a crisis of conscience. I felt conflicted. I would not have been able to serve his interests further.”

Vieira was one of seven Independent Senators who on Tuesday voted in support of legislation to deny repeat offenders bail. But during the Committee Stage of the Bail (Amendment) Bill 2013 — which will return to the House of Representatives next month — Vieira, 56, gave an unusually personal account of his own experiences with repeat offenders from his time as a criminal attorney.

“I once had a client who was charged with cutting up a woman,” Vieira told Senators. “I got him off. A year later, he was before the court again. He had sliced up another woman. She was killed.” As the chamber fell silent, Vieira added, “so I understand recidivism”.

The case in question was that of Roy Phillip, a Santa Cruz labourer who had been accused of wounding a woman in 1976. At a trial in the 1980s, Vieira was Phillip’s defence attorney and ran a defence which resulted in an acquittal.

Phillip was acquitted after a jury in the Port-of-Spain First Assize Court found him not guilty of wounding with intent.

Phillip was on trial before Justice Mustapha Ibrahim on a charge of wounding his former sweetheart, Shirley Lawrence, at her La Canoa Road home on Valentine’s Day, 1976.

The State’s case was that Phillip, who was a repeat offender having a previous conviction, was serving a term of imprisonment when he was told by Lawrence that their relatonship was over. The State said when Phillip got out of jail he went on to wound Lawrence at the back of her head, hand and leg with a broken bottle.

The defence, marshaled by Vieira, was that Phillip wounded Lawrence after she had bitten the Santa Cruz man and squeezed his private parts.

“The first time I had represented this chap, he had given a story, and it was plausible,” Vieira — who has since given up criminal law, and is now a partner in a well-known law firm — said. “We ran the defence and the jury believed him.” But then, less than two years later, the same client came back knocking on Vieira’s door. And alarm bells went off.

“The first time it was against a woman, and he said self-defence,” Vieira said. “The second time now it was a case of slashing and stabbing. That woman died. But it was a similar sort of situation. At this stage, you begin to wonder if this is a modus operandi, if he had some sort of problem.”

Vieira said defence attorneys are called upon to comply with the legal profession’s code of conduct, and this regulates their practice. He said sometimes this means the public does not often understand the role of a defence counsel. The lawyer cannot knowingly act on false information, but rather acts on instructions.

“You have to be guided by the rules. There are cases where I have felt a person might be guilty and, upon further investigation, it was revealed they were innocent,” he said. “So there is a distance and rigour that has to be there. But you cannot make up facts that you know to be untrue and carry that to trial. The defence attorney’s job is to test the prosecution’s case. It is for the prosecution to prove its case.”

Of the case, he said, “I don’t know if the word is regret. I did my job. You have to do your job to the best of your ability under the code of ethics.”

Vieira said he voted in favour of the legislation because of the crime situation.

“I am very alarmed at what is going on in Trinidad,” he said. “The kind of numbers we are seeing is bad. I felt we have to take these guys off the streets if we can.”