whether his appeal against conviction is successful.

Arnett Winfield Dill, 43, from Leacraft Hill Road, Southampton, was convicted in November 1998 of the theft of electronic equipment from Audio Visual Electronics in Somerset. A jury also convicted him of burning the premises which caused $100,000 worth of damage.

Dill appeared in the Court of Appeal yesterday while his lawyer Peter Farge put his case to the judges.

But the bench was eager to hear from Crown counsel Patrick Doherty as to how the conviction could be maintained in the face of a lack of direct evidence that the fire was deliberately started.

Lt. Malcolm Johnson, of the Bermuda Fire Service, had given evidence at the trial that it was his opinion that the fire was deliberately set, but he could not rule out that it had been an accident.

It was the Crown's case that Dill or his accomplice had started the fire to cover their tracks after the burglary.

The fireman's evidence was that the point of origin of the fire was a desk.

The desk contained 90 percent of the store's business records. Mr. Doherty said the thieves needed to destroy these records so that the items they stole could not be traced.

The Crown said it was stretching common sense to say that a fire and a burglary occurred on the same night in the same premises and were not related.

But the bench pointed out two problems with the Crown's theory. First, there was no evidence, such as a can of gasoline, that the fire was deliberately set. And second, there was no evidence that the accused had set the fire.

Mr. Doherty conceded these points, but said the totality of the circumstantial evidence together with the accused's motive for the fire, should be enough to permit the inference that it was the accused who set the fire.

It was the Crown's contention that Dill had stolen electronic goods from a number of retail establishments and intended to set up shop for himself with the stolen goods as inventory. In order to do this he had to destroy invoices and Custom's documents which related to the items.

The Court of Appeal's ruling is due later this month.