Prosecutor fined and admonished over Facebook comments

A young Bermudian prosecutor has been fined US$1,000 and admonished by the island\'s Bar Council after comments she made on the popular social networking site, Facebook, according to a report on www.cananews.net.



Takiyah Burgess\' comments that \"Takiyah (a defendant) is in court ready for the lies\" and \"Takiyah is listening to a pack of lies\" were posted on Facebook while defendant Antoine Anderson was giving evidence on February 11.



Anderson was later convicted, along with his brother-in-law Philip Bradshaw, of fatally shooting Aquil Richardson, a father of three on Boxing Day 2007.



Burgess\' comments were spotted on the web site by Anderson\'s lawyer Elizabeth Christopher. Her calls to Burgess failed to get them removed from her page and prompted another entry about the case.



This led Anderson\'s British Queen\'s Counsel Benjamin Nolan and Bradshaw\'s lawyer Anesta Weekes QC to ask Chief Justice Richard Ground to halt the trial and discharge the jury.



\"In my 27 years at the Bar I haven\'t come across this. It\'s new to me. For this sort of comment to be made by a member of the prosecution team, that\'s what gives it its special seriousness,” Weekes told the Chief Justice.



Burgess page listed her as having 449 Facebook friends who, the lawyers feared, could all see her comments.



\"There comes a point when if she doesn\'t take it down, she goes to jail. She\'d better take it down right now,\" the Chief Justice warned.



The Bar Council, which is the professional body for Bermuda\'s lawyers, launched its own complaint against Burgess, leading to the establishment of a disciplinary tribunal that found Burgess guilty of two counts of improper conduct.