Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie says he will not in­ter­vene in a cur­rent ap­pli­ca­tion be­fore the High Court in­volv­ing the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, in which a judge is be­ing asked to re­cuse him­self from the case. Archie made the state­ment in a press re­lease yes­ter­day af­ter­noon in which he clar­i­fied is­sues about his in­volve­ment in the case which were raised in a re­cent news­pa­per re­port.

"Mr Archie wish­es to as­sure the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty that he will do noth­ing to com­pro­mise the in­tegri­ty of the ju­di­cial process or bring the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice in­to dis­re­pute by in­ter­ven­ing in the mat­ter," the re­lease said. Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, Archie was not con­tact­ed di­rect­ly by the at­tor­neys in the mat­ter as pur­port­ed in the news­pa­per re­port. It notes that Archie was on­ly copied a let­ter which was ad­dressed to the judge.

"The doc­u­ment in no way ac­cused the judge of any mis­con­duct. His (Archie) hope is that the let­ter was not in­tend­ed to have him in­ter­vene in the mat­ter, which would be at best mis­guid­ed and cer­tain­ly in­ap­pro­pri­ate," the re­lease said. It sought to iden­ti­fy the ap­pro­pri­ate pro­ce­dure for such an ap­pli­ca­tion in the High Court.

"The ap­pli­ca­tion must first be made be­fore the pre­sid­ing judge who must be guid­ed on­ly by his or her ju­di­cial oath and con­science and the well-known au­thor­i­ties on the sub­ject of re­cusal on the ba­sis of ap­par­ent bias," the re­lease added.