Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard is prob­ing who or­dered that charges in a drug pos­ses­sion mat­ter against a Tu­na­puna fam­i­ly be dropped. This comes af­ter Mag­is­trate Bramb­hanan Dubay al­lowed a fam­i­ly to walk free fol­low­ing a guilty plea by a rel­a­tive. The uni­ver­si­ty lec­tur­er and four fam­i­ly mem­bers ap­peared be­fore the Tu­na­puna Mag­is­trates' Court on Thurs­day charged with pos­ses­sion of 130 grammes of mar­i­jua­na. How­ev­er, fol­low­ing the guilty plea Dubay dis­con­tin­ued the mat­ter against the oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers who had plead­ed their in­no­cence.

Un­der the T&T Con­sti­tu­tion the DPP is the on­ly of­fice hold­er with the au­thor­i­ty to dis­con­tin­ue charges at any giv­en stage. Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Gas­pard con­firmed that the mat­ter is en­gag­ing his at­ten­tion. "I gave no such in­struc­tion, nei­ther was my opin­ion sought in the mat­ter. I am present­ly look­ing in­to the mat­ter with a view of de­ter­min­ing what tran­spired," the DPP said. Sec­tion: 90 Sub sec­tion (3) of the Con­sti­tu­tion states: The DPP shall have pow­er in any case in which he con­sid­ers it prop­er to do so:

(a) To in­sti­tute and un­der­take crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings against any per­son be­fore any court in re­spect of any of­fence against the laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go;

(b) To take over and con­tin­ue any such crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings that may have been in­sti­tut­ed by any oth­er per­son or au­thor­i­ty;

(c) To dis­con­tin­ue at any stage be­fore judg­ment is de­liv­ered any such crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings in­sti­tut­ed or un­der­tak­en by him­self or any oth­er per­son or au­thor­i­ty.

The DPP, the sec­tion fur­ther states, shall have the pow­er in any case in which he con­sid­ers it prop­er to do so to dis­con­tin­ue at any stage be­fore judge­ment is de­liv­ered in any crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ing in­sti­tut­ed or un­der­tak­en by him­self or any oth­er per­son or au­thor­i­ty. He al­so has the sole pow­er to in­sti­tute any crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ing and take over crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings in­sti­tut­ed by any per­son. It was fol­low­ing the re­fram­ing of the Con­sti­tu­tion to its Re­pub­li­can sta­tus that mem­bers of the pub­lic and the le­gal pro­fes­sion felt the pros­e­cu­tion process was be­ing politi­cised be­cause the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was a mem­ber of Cab­i­net, a gov­ern­ing par­ty and ba­si­cal­ly a politi­cian.

It was on this ba­sis it was con­sid­ered that if the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al could in­sti­tute and dis­con­tin­ue pros­e­cu­tion it could amount to po­lit­i­cal ha­rass­ment, po­lit­i­cal pa­tron­age and po­lit­i­cal nepo­tism. Rec­om­men­da­tions for the Con­sti­tu­tion to be changed were ac­cept­ed in re­spect to the DPP and an in­de­pen­dent per­son be­ing ap­point­ed by the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion who was in­su­lat­ed from pol­i­tics in or­der to have that pow­er. The courts, the Privy Coun­cil, Court of Ap­peal and High Court have had on oc­ca­sion to in­ter­pret the Con­sti­tu­tion in sev­er­al rul­ings.