Lawyer loses appeal against fraud conviction
MYRTLE Johnson, the attorney from Mandeville who was convicted for obtaining $400,000 from a client by pretending that she was authorised to sell a parcel of land by a woman who was, in fact, dead, yesterday lost her bid for an acquittal in the local appellate court.
The decision, which was arrived at by local appellate court judges Ian Forte QC, Paul Harrison and Ransford Langrin, signalled the end of Johnson’s 47 year-old legal career, as the judges also turned down her appeal to be reinstated to the country’s roll of practising attorneys.
They will put their reasons in writing at a later date.
Johnson was convicted in 1997 after Supreme Court judge, Norma McIntosh, who was then a Resident Magistrate, found her guilty of defrauding her client, Joseph Allen, by taking his money as down-payment on a piece of land in Mandeville.
Allen lodged a complaint to the General Legal Council (GLC), which struck her off the roll on February 12, 2000 after finding that her conviction had brought her in breach of the profession’s canons.
Attorneys Ian Ramsay and Debbie Martin tried to convince the court to overturn the decisions, first of the RM, on the ground that the conviction was unreasonable, and of the GLC on the ground that Johnson was not given a fair hearing before being disbarred.
Unless she is convicted of another crime within the next two years, Johnson will not go to jail, as the nine-month prison sentence imposed on her in 1997 was suspended.