Derek Achong

High Court judge Mi­ra Dean Ar­mor­er will rule on April 5 on whether the re­peal of Sec­tion 34 of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Of­fences) Act was un­con­sti­tu­tion­al. The high­ly-an­tic­i­pat­ed judg­ment comes al­most two months af­ter the case was tried be­fore Dean-Ar­mor­er in the Port-of-Spain High Court for five days.

Af­ter Sec­tion 34 was pro­claimed on Au­gust 31 last year, 26 peo­ple ap­plied un­der the new law to have their crim­i­nal cas­es dis­missed.The act sought to abol­ish pre­lim­i­nary in­quiries for se­ri­ous crim­i­nal cas­es. It pro­vid­ed that if their case had not start­ed with­in ten years of the date an of­fence was com­mit­ted, the ac­cused could ap­ply to have the case au­to­mat­i­cal­ly dis­missed.

Most of the ap­pli­cants were in­dict­ed on fraud charges stem­ming from the con­struc­tion of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. The rest are fac­ing oth­er, un­re­lat­ed crim­i­nal charges.Be­fore their mat­ters were sched­uled to be heard in the High Court, Par­lia­ment re­pealed the leg­is­la­tion.

The ap­pli­cants are ar­gu­ing this was con­trary to the prin­ci­ple of sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers, as it in­fringed on the pow­ers of the ju­di­cia­ry to ad­ju­di­cate on­go­ing mat­ters be­fore it. They al­so claim they le­git­i­mate­ly ex­pect­ed to be dis­charged when they ap­plied un­der the leg­is­la­tion.

In re­sponse, the State has said the re­peal was with­in Par­lia­ment's dis­cre­tion. The mo­tions filed by busi­ness­men Fer­gu­son, Edoo and Mar­itime Life and Gen­er­al Co Ltd will be dealt with first as a test case. Lawyers for the oth­er ap­pli­cants will de­cide af­ter­wards on their clients' next move.

The ap­pli­cants' le­gal team in­clud­ed British Queen's Coun­sel Michael Beloff and Ed­ward Fitzger­ald and Se­nior Coun­sel Fyard Ho­sein.Lord David Pan­nick, QC, led the State's le­gal team.

Ap­pli­cants

Fer­gu­son and Mar­itime Life and Gen­er­al Co Ltd ex­ec­u­tives John Smith and Bar­bara Gomes

Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh

For­mer Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty ex­ec­u­tive Am­rith Ma­haraj

Gal­barans­ingh's North­ern Con­struc­tion Ltd

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Bri­an Kuei Tung

For­mer min­is­ters Car­los John, Rus­sell Hug­gins and Sadiq Baksh,

Busi­ness­man Ameer Edoo

Ty­rone Gopee

Pe­ter Cateau

Busi­ness­woman Re­nee Pierre

For­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day and his wife Oma

Brent Al­varez

Dane Lewis

Carl­ton Roop

Col­in and Os­wald Cat­lyn

Anand Har­ryper­sad

An­der­son Mehar­ris