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Prosecution, Merx’s attorney file appeals in Merx fraud case
by The Daily Herald
Posted: Aug 3, 2006 17:50 UTC
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PHILIPSBURG - Both the Prosecutor’s Office and attorney for former chief prosecutor Cor Merx have filed appeals against Judge Rick Smid’s July 19 decision in Merx’s fraud trial.
Chief Prosecutor of the Windward Islands Taco Stein confirmed Wednesday that the Prosecutor’s Office had filed its appeal at the Court of First Instance on Friday afternoon.
And, Jairo Bloem, the attorney representing Cor Merx, said he had filed an appeal on behalf of his client at 4:45pm Wednesday.
The deadline for both the prosecution and the defence to file appeals against the judge’s decision was yesterday, Wednesday, August 2, at 5:00pm.
Merx was sentenced to a suspended prison term of one year and banned from any job in the Prosecutor’s Office of the Netherlands Antilles or its legal successor for a period of five years.
He was found guilty of forgery in an attempt to obtain the telephone records of his former girlfriend and her new lover. However, he was acquitted of two other counts of forgery.
Stein said he had filed the appeal on behalf of the Prosecutor General’s Office in Curaçao. That appeal deals with the Prosecution’s objection to the judge’s claim that there was insufficient evidence to legally and convincingly prove that Merx had committed fraud on two other occasions.
The Prosecutor’s Office is also unhappy with the judge’s ruling, which it says ignored the prosecution’s request for a one-year jail term. The judge ruled that the punishment did not fit the crime.
Now the Court of First Instance will put together its files on the Merx case, which goes back to April 2005 when the Prosecutor’s Office obtained e-mail messages in which Merx reportedly falsely informed the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement that several persons, among them his ex-girlfriend, were suspects in a crime. He reportedly did so in a bid to obtain their travel plans.
Bloem said his client was almost compelled to file an appeal in light of the Prosecution’s decision to appeal the July 19 ruling. He explained that without a filed appeal, Merx in essence would have been agreeing to the suspended jail sentence and the conditional sentence of a five-year ban from working in the Prosecutor’s Office.
“The appeal judge would have looked at the matter and, after seeing that the prosecutor had appealed, but Merx didn’t, would have simply dealt with the claims of the prosecutor and taken it for granted that Merx did not oppose being convicted on the one count,” Bloem explained.
Bloem said his client had appealed the decision to find him guilty on the one count of falsifying documents to get his ex-girlfriend and her lover’s phone records.
One main point in Merx’s defence in the initial stage of the trial was the alleged promise of the Prosecutor’s Office that he would not be prosecuted after his departure for the Netherlands. After hearing several witnesses, the judge said there was no credibility to the promise that Merx would not be prosecuted.
Bloem also contended that Stein had collected evidence illegally, as he was in St. Maarten working and had not yet been sworn in to function as Chief Prosecutor.
However, the prosecution stated that the investigation into Merx’s fraud case had been led by Prosecutor Walter Tielkemeijer in Curaçao, who had requested the information over the phone. Stein had merely confirmed those requests in writing.
These and other factors will have to be weighed by the appeal court which is expected to hand down its ruling within a few months.
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