Former supreme court judge slammed for saying he was 'horny' from the amount of sex mentioned during murder trial
A former judge in Bermuda has been criticized by the British Court of Appeals for telling his court during a murder trial that he was getting "horny" because of the amount of sex that was being mentioned during testimony.
Carlisle Greaves, who had served as a junior Supreme Court judge in the British Overseas Territory until his retirement this year, made the unsavory comment during the trial of Khyri Smith-Williams for the February 2011 murder of father-of-one Colford Ferguson, according to The Sun.
The 29-year-old Colford was shot dead as he worked on a house in Somerset, Bermuda, and Troy Harris, a witness for the prosecution, had told the court that Smith-Williams admitted his involvement in the murder.
He said Smith-Williams had told him that Rasheed Muhammad had pulled the trigger and that Ferguson was not the intended target. When Harris told the court that he and Smith-Williams had former sexual partners in common, Greaves reportedly responded and said, "All this sex is beginning to get me horny."
Smith-Williams was later convicted of murder by a majority verdict and was sentenced to serve at least 35 years in prison last October, following which his defense attorney, Jerome Lynch, took the case to the British Court of Appeals and asked for a retrial on the grounds that Greaves had behaved inappropriately.
While the court of appeals rejected Lynch's request, judge Sir Maurice Kay did criticize Greaves' remarks, calling it "inappropriate" and "inimical".
"In particular, his comment 'all this sex is beginning to get me horny' was inappropriate and inimical to the dignity of court proceedings," the judge said. "Mr. Lynch was justified in criticizing it. However, I do not believe that it damaged the defense or had the potential to undermine the safety of the conviction."
Greaves had started his legal career in Barbados, where he worked as a prosecutor, before moving up the ranks and moving to the Magistrates Court in 2001, according to Bermuda Real. He was appointed as a Puisne Judge in 2005.
He announced his intention to retire in October 2015, following through with the promise in August at the end of his last case at the sentencing of a child sex offender.