Resh­ma Ra­goonath

For­mer Chief?Mag­is­trate Sher­man?Mc Nicolls has died. Mc Nicolls, 57, of Torib Tabaquite Road, New Grant, lost a bat­tle with chron­ic lym­phoid leukaemia (CLL) yes­ter­day and passed away at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex where he had been ail­ing for some time. He leaves to mourn four chil­dren, Michael, Mikela, Sher­man Jr and Sher­mine.

Mc Nicolls' ca­reer spanned 31 years. In 2010 Mc Nicolls, who was then Chief Mag­is­trate, took ex­tend­ed leave to bat­tle can­cer. He sought treat­ment in?Cana­da and was lat­er re­placed by Se­nior Mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar af­ter re­tir­ing at 55.

Yes­ter­day Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie on be­half of the ju­di­cia­ry ex­pressed its pro­found sad­ness at Mc Nicholls' pass­ing and de­scribed him as "a per­son of even tem­pera­ment who was able to main­tain his calm even in the most chal­leng­ing cir­cum­stances." He was in­volved in a num­ber of high-pro­file mat­ters dur­ing his ca­reer.

As Reg­is­trar of the High Court he wit­nessed the con­tro­ver­sial ex­e­cu­tion of Glen Ash­by, who was hanged for mur­der in 1994 while his lawyers were be­fore the Ap­peal Court ask­ing for a stay of ex­e­cu­tion and the Privy Coun­cil was al­so si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly grant­i­ng a stay. An­oth­er case was the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion charges laid against for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day in re­la­tion to a Lon­don bank ac­count.

The then chief mag­is­trate con­vict­ed Pan­day of the charges in April 2006 and sen­tenced him to two years' im­pris­on­ment. He al­so or­dered that Pan­day pay the State $1.6 mil­lion which was in his Lon­don ac­count at the end of the years 1997, 1998, and 1999. The for­mer Prime Min­is­ter, who spent sev­en days in jail, chal­lenged the rul­ing in the Privy Coun­cil and won.

Mc Nicolls was al­so em­broiled in the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing for­mer Chief Jus­tice Sat­nar­ine Shar­ma whom he ac­cused of at­tempt­ing to in­flu­ence the out­come of Pan­day's In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion tri­al. He was al­so the state's main wit­ness in im­peach­ment pro­ceed­ings against the for­mer Chief Jus­tice.

In June 2007 Mc Nicolls faced dis­ci­pli­nary charges from the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal?Ser­vices Com­mis­sion for re­fus­ing to be cross-ex­am­ined in the crim­i­nal in­quiry against Shar­ma. This re­fusal caused the case against Shar­ma to col­lapse. Ear­li­er this year Mc Nicolls re­turned to court­room as an at­tor­ney af­ter he re-es­tab­lished his pri­vate prac­tice at his New Grant home.

Yes­ter­day res­i­dents on Mc Nicolls' street were still in shock. One neigh­bour, who knew Mc Nicolls for the last 33 years, said res­i­dents would miss him. "He was very qui­et and down to earth.?He liked his gar­den­ing most of all," the neigh­bour, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said.

Mc Nicolls, the neigh­bour said, was al­ways will­ing to give free le­gal ad­vice to any­one who asked him for help. He was a Sev­enth Day Ad­ven­tist and was "very strong in his church," the neigh­bour added.

The neigh­bour said Christ­mas in their neigh­bour­hood would not be bright since res­i­dents were al­ready mourn­ing the death of ma­chine op­er­a­tor Ron­nie De­onar­ine, 45, who was crushed to death at the Gol­con­da to Debe high­way con­struc­tion site on Thurs­day. He lived a few hous­es away from?Mc Nicolls.

Yes­ter­day con­do­lences from the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty poured in as news of Mc Nicolls' death spread. Se­nior Coun­sel Hen­drick­son?Se­u­nath, for­mer vice pres­i­dent of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, ex­pressed shock. "I saw him at the Princes Town court just a few weeks ago. He had a long and var­ied ca­reer as a lawyer. I first knew him as a mag­is­trate, then a reg­is­trar, then back as a mag­is­trate. He was an in­ter­est­ing per­son. He had some ups and downs gen­er­al­ly speak­ing," Se­u­nath said.

In­ter­im pres­i­dent of the South­ern As­sem­bly of Lawyers Dex­ter Bai­ley said the as­sem­bly was sad­dened to learn of Mc Nicolls' death. "We would have lost some­body who would have con­tributed great­ly to the le­gal pro­fes­sion. It came as a shock to every­body. I would have seen him re­cent­ly in the court. I think for mem­bers of the pro­fes­sion it was quite sud­den and un­ex­pect­ed. He was some­one who was pleas­ant, al­ways smil­ing and en­gag­ing in con­ver­sa­tion," Bai­ley said.