SXMElections.com

PHILIPSBURG--Where the Court of First Instance had provided a "beautiful motivation" for throwing out the Prosecutor's cases in the so-called vote-buying case, the Joint Court of Justice made a "somewhat artificial" decision last week in referring the case back to the lesser court for retrial, said top lawyer from the Netherlands Cees Korvinus on Monday.

Korvinus and his partner at their Amsterdam law office Alexander van Roy presented a lecture at the Courthouse Monday afternoon on recent developments in jurisprudence by the High Court in The Hague.

Referring to recent developments in connection with the inadmissibility of cases presented by the Prosecutor's Office, Korvinus told his audience, among whom was Court of First Instance Vice-President Judge Koen Luijks, that the Court's decision of August 2014 to throw out the case against four persons suspected of having sold their votes to United People's (UP) party in the September 2010 election "was exactly in line with High Court jurisprudence."

In what Korvinus described as a "beautiful motivation," Judge Luijks had declared the Prosecutor's Office's cases against suspects inadmissible. The Prosecutor's Office had violated the principle of equal treatment, the Court had said.

The Prosecutor's Office had given the "semblance of class justice" in its decision to prosecute only these suspects for their roles in the election fraud, but not UP party and/or its leadership, which was in contravention of the prohibition of arbitrariness, the Judge had stated.

By contrast, attorney Korvinus found last week's decision of the Joint Court of Justice to refer the case back to the Court of First Instance "somewhat artificial."

The Joint Court arrived at the conclusion that the cases against the alleged vote-sellers and possible -buyers within the UP party were "not a matter of equal cases being handled unequally."

According to the Dutch lawyer, who specialises in professed cassation cases, among others, there are possibilities for suspects to launch such an appeal with the highest court in the Netherlands. "It would be good to submit this case to the High Court," Korvinus said.

The lecture, organised by St. Maarten Bar Association, was presented before a small audience of lawyers and other workers in the judiciary. In their 90-minute lecture, Korvinus and Van Roy addressed new High Court jurisprudence on various topics of interest for St. Maarten, including money-laundering; self-defence; complicity; murder and manslaughter; and the reliability of witnesses and victims.

Korvinus (65) practices law in Amsterdam and is a specialist in criminal law. He is known for defending a number of top criminals in the Netherlands, but also has built himself a reputation in representing squatters in court cases. He was also among founders of lawyers' collectives in the Netherlands.

He has been chairman of public broadcaster VARA and was a candidate for green-left party GroenLinks during the 2006 election of the Dutch Parliament's Second Chamber.

Van Roy has been a lawyer since 1995 and spent his first three years practicing law in St. Maarten at the law office of Gibson and Associates. He has been working with Korvinus since 2000 and became a partner in Korvinus, Van Roy and Zandt law office on January 1, 2011.