Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Julian Hall died he was 59

Hall: a persuasive advocate, he claimed to have lost only two jury trials

Julian Hall was a flamboyant and controversial figure in Bermuda for three decades. Articulate, charming and charismatic, he was a man of great talent and ability, but these strengths were not always counterbalanced by coolness of judgment and political sagacity.

He enjoyed a shooting-star career as a defence lawyer, before becoming mired in financial problems and bitter political infighting which almost, but never entirely, extinguished his flame.

After his death The Royal Gazette newspaper remarked in an editorial that maybe he was simply too big for Bermuda — “which can be as small in mind as it is in scale”.

Julian Hall was born in Bermuda in 1950. His parents divorced when he was 4, and he and his sisters were brought up by their maternal grandmother. Hall won a scholarship to the Berkeley Institute, after which, with financial help from Clarence Terceira, chairman of the United Bermuda Party (UBP), he went to Mount Allison University, in New Brunswick, Canada, graduating in law in 1970.

In 1971-73 he studied at the London School of Economics. He was called to the Bermuda Bar in 1974 and joined Conyers, Dill and Pearman, becoming one of the first black lawyers to join a large Bermudian law firm. He was also active in the UBP, rising to be deputy chairman at the age of 27.

However, he fell out with the party in the acrimonious aftermath of the notorious murder of the Governor, Sir Richard Sharples, and his aide-de-camp, Captain Hugh Sayers, in 1973. Two men, Buck Burrows and Larry Tacklyn, were convicted of the murders — they also killed the Governor’s dog, Horsa — and they were hanged in 1977. It was claimed that they were associated with a Bermudian Black Power group, and their executions were followed by three days of rioting.

Hall was associated with their defence team, which had argued that certain aspects of the trial were unconstitutional. He switched his political allegiance to the Progressive Labour Party (PLP) in 1979.

The Burrows-Tacklyn case was a rare setback for Hall, who claimed to have lost only two jury trials in his career. One of his most famous courtroom successes was his defence of Michael Meredith, who had been accused of killing his wife — the case was dubbed “Bermuda’s OJ” by one Bermudian lawyer.

Despite his legal success Hall began to have money problems in the late 1970s. A festival which he organised in 1977, Summerfest, featuring such luminaries as Peter Tosh and Richie Havens — and remembered by many as the finest rock concert the island had seen — was a financial disaster.

In 1982 Hall was declared bankrupt, and in 1984 his legal career was effectively ended when a law was passed banning bankrupts from practising law in Bermuda. Hall claimed that the law was passed by the UBP to punish him for his “disloyalty”.

After a stint working in Canada, Hall returned to Bermuda and launched himself on a political career. He was elected to the House of Assembly for Hamilton Parish, but served only one term, from 1989 to 1993, before losing his seat. He acted as the PLP’s Shadow Justice Minister, and was always a fine speaker and a sometimes entertainingly outspoken parliamentarian.

Hall also won praise as a wordsmith. While unable to practise law, he wrote a regular column for the Bermuda Sun newspaper and was praised for the effectiveness of his critiques of the island’s administration.

He remained a controversial figure who attracted rumour and speculation. In 1991 it was suggested during a trial that Hall was somehow involved in the smuggling to Bermuda of 60kg of cannabis. He was also rumoured to figure in an abortive police investigation into drug trafficking and money laundering in 1993. Hall vehemently denied all insinuations, and on occasion imputed racist motives to those who made them.

And his financial problems continued to dog him — being unable to work he could not pay off his creditors, and in 2000 he was again declared bankrupt.

In 2005 he was acquitted of five charges of having stolen about US$500,000 from an elderly client a decade earlier.

Hall finally won the right to practise law in Bermuda in February this year when the 1984 Act was amended but he was by then too ill to return to work.

Hall married Isabella Beattie in 1981. They were divorced but remained close, and she and their three daughters survive him.

Julian Hall, lawyer, was born on March 4, 1950. He died after a long illness on July 18, 2009, aged 59

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