"cheap shots'' at Crown counsel in a cynical attempt to get their clients off, a top lawyer has claimed.

Peter Eccles, a senior Crown counsel until last month, said some lawyers tried to sway juries by implying that important people or white expatriates would not be brought before the courts when a black person was in the dock.

Mr. Eccles, a Canadian, said a number of lawyers also made routine xenophobic comments about his nationality to play upon the prejudices of jurors.

Speaking exclusively to The Royal Gazette from Canada, Mr. Eccles said some magistrates also suggested to him and other Crown counsel that race was a factor in bringing charges when, he insisted, it had no part to play.

Mr. Eccles said the only consideration taken into account when charging someone was the evidence against them.

A number of leading counsels in the Department of Public Prosecutions (DPP) are Canadian and Mr. Eccles said it was an advantage having expatriate prosecutors because they had no idea who they were charging.

He said false racist and xenophobic jibes were "stock in trade'' for some defence lawyers, whom he refused to name.

He told The Royal Gazette : "The respect for your learned friend on the other side was something that was not as readily apparent in the defence and the Bar in Bermuda.

"Something I wasn't prepared for, and I should have been, was the overriding concern raised by the defence in virtually every trial with race being an issue when it wasn't.

"It also came from the Bench in Magistrates' Court. There were allegations made by magistrates that the Crown had some kind of secondary motive, that if it was an important citizen the charge would never have been raised.

"The veiled suggestion was that if it was a white expat or an exempt company officer the charge would never be laid. These are groundless and wholly improper.

"The only thing I looked at were witness statements and physical statements.

It was a matter of the utmost indifference whether I'm charging an orphan living on the streets or a leading citizen.

"An advantage of expat Crown counsel was that we had no idea who people were.

To have a suggestion raised by the defence that I would not have charged a person if they were important makes my job difficult and unnecessarily so.

"In my first trial I was accused of being a racist when I stood aside jurors at selection, although the `r' word was never used.

"I was objecting to people because they were related to the accused or I have information they might not be able to discharge their duties because they could be biased in favour of, or against, the Crown. All I had was names. I had no idea of race.

"I felt deeply insulted and felt it was an entirely unwarranted cheap shot.

Over the course of the next two-plus years when I was at the DPP I got used to a lot of cheap shots, taken not just at me.

"Cheap shots seem to be a stock in trade of a number of defence counsel. I will not name them, but they know who they are. I am not used to practising where this is routine from some counsel. Improper comments to the jury should not occur.

"The race card was commonly played, but so was the Canadian card. Where I am from has nothing to do with the evidence so why throw into the face of the jury `oh, he's a Canadian'.

"Making disparaging comments about Canadians is the last desperate play by someone who doesn't have anything else to play. At one trial I lost my temper with one more crack about Canadians and said `if you are going to insult someone's country, insult someone else's country because it has nothing to do with this'.

"There is enough stress and tension in this job without these additional and unnecessary cheap shots.'' Mr. Eccles said that before he arrived in Bermuda, he had heard Canadian counsel had rightly been accused of elitism, but he did not subscribe to that view and did not know if it was true.

The Royal Gazette faxed Mr. Eccles' comments to Bermuda Bar Association president Richard Hector on Monday, but he did not return telephone calls to comment.