Solicitor General William Pearce yesterday urged a judge not to let a suspected killer "get away with murder'' by cancelling the case against him.

Puisne Judge Richard Ground will deliver his judgement in the Kirk Mundy judicial review hearing on Friday afternoon.

He will decide whether or not Attorney General Elliott Mottley -- fighting the Rebecca Middleton murder case -- was guilty of an "abuse of process'' by charging Mundy with the murder last month.

But Mr. Pearce, a Canadian lawyer fighting his first legal battle in Bermuda, yesterday defended his boss Mr. Mottley.

He again denied that a deal was struck to save Mundy from a murder charge if he testified against co-defendant Justis Smith.

And he claimed Mundy had lied anyway and could not now be called to give evidence against Smith in the murder trial.

Mr. Pearce said: "If a stay was granted, right-thinking people here and abroad would be shocked to think that Bermuda's justice system failed to bring Mundy to trial and virtually allowed him to get away with murder by his deception of the authorities.

"The Attorney General comes to the conclusion that Mundy has lied. We cannot call him as a witness.

"If there was a mistake made by the Attorney General because of public pressure and they laid the charge too quickly, that doesn't give rise to an abuse of process.

"He acted honestly on the evidence before him.'' Seventeen-year-old Rebecca, of Belleville, Ontario, was found stabbed to death on Ferry Reach, St. George's, in July 1996.

Smith, due back in court on March 2, was charged with the murder at the time but Jamaican-born Mundy, 23, pleaded guilty to being an "accessory after the fact'' and was sentenced to five years out of a maximum of seven.

He was handed the murder charge last month after alleged new medical evidence came to light.

Mr. Justice Ground has ordered that none of the new evidence can be reported.

But Saul Froomkin, representing Mundy, insisted nothing had changed to alter the "deal'' struck with his client.

Referring to Mr. Pearce, the former top prosecutor said: "He said there was no deal, no agreement, no understanding, no nothing.

"Now he's saying if, however, there was a deal, there was a breach.

"That's like saying: `I didn't rape her, I wasn't there. But if I did, it was with consent'.'' He added that the deal had been broken and Mundy should not now be charged with murder.

Mr. Froomkin, who also argued there could no longer be a fair trial against Mundy, added: "I say there was an agreement.

"The Crown says if there was an agreement, Mundy breached the agreement by lying.

"What did he lie about and is there credible evidence on which the Attorney General could rely to say there was a breach of contract?'' Mr. Froomkin referred to a series of legal cases of "abuse of process'' which protect defendants from "double jeopardy''. He said people could not be convicted of one offence and then face trial for a more serious offence "arising out of the same, or substantially the same, set of facts''.

He added: "We are talking about double jeopardy.

"The principle is you cannot be tried a second time for an offence based on the same facts of an offence for which you were tried before and either convicted or acquitted.'' Mr. Justice Ground questioned whether it could be argued that any new evidence constituted a "new set of facts''.

Mr. Froomkin disagreed, claiming evidence could not be considered as fact.

But he added: "There's an established principle that the deal should be upheld.

"Unless My Lord can find credible evidence that Mr. Mundy lied, then the Crown cannot proceed.'' Mr. Justice Ground said he would deliver his judgement at 2.30 p.m. on Friday.