JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Lawyers on delay in judgments: Not enough to impeach CJ

by

20131207

A for­mer chief jus­tice and two Se­nior Coun­sel have agreed that de­lays in de­liv­er­ing judg­ments is not suf­fi­cient grounds for the im­peach­ment of Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie.When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day for com­ment on the pro­posed ac­tion threat­ened by two death row in­mates on Thurs­day, for­mer chief jus­tice Sat­nar­ine Shar­ma, for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, and Se­nior Coun­sel Is­rael Khan, agreed that such ac­tion against a Chief Jus­tice could on­ly be tak­en in ex­treme cir­cum­stances.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Shar­ma, who was al­so sub­ject to sim­i­lar pro­ceed­ings dur­ing his tenure in 2005, said he be­lieved the over three-year de­lay in both men's ap­peals was not enough to com­pel the Prime Min­is­ter to in­voke her pow­ers un­der Sec­tion 137 of the Con­sti­tu­tion."It (im­peach­ment) is a last re­sort. I don't think an iso­lat­ed case can in­voke that. It can not be done willy-nil­ly like with a pub­lic ser­vant," Shar­ma said.

Shar­ma said such pro­ceed­ings would like­ly af­fect the en­tire ad­min­stra­tion of jus­tice as the Ju­di­cia­ry was one of the coun­try's ma­jor in­sti­tu­tions.In 2005, for­mer chief mag­is­trate Sher­man Mc Nicolls made a com­plaint over al­leged mis­con­duct by for­mer chief jus­tice Shar­ma.For­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning then ad­vised for­mer pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards to set up a tri­bunal to in­ves­ti­gate the al­le­ga­tions and Shar­ma was sus­pend­ed.

How­ev­er, Shar­ma mount­ed sev­er­al le­gal chal­lenges, which cul­mi­nat­ed with a Privy Coun­cil ap­peal in which he was cleared of the al­le­ga­tions.He al­so re­ferred to his per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence with im­peach­ment pro­ceed­ings, while say­ing: "I had to fight tooth and nail against the al­le­ga­tion."Shar­ma al­so warned that im­peach­ment pro­ceed­ings should not be abused to "bring down peo­ple."

Ma­haraj al­so said he be­lieved im­peach­ment pro­ceed­ings against Archie were not nec­es­sary and said he be­lieved the threat was po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed."I don't like the smell of this at­tempt to im­peach the Chief Jus­tice for de­lays in judg­ments. It smells of a po­lit­i­cal con­spir­a­cy to get rid of him," Ma­haraj said.

The Is­sue

In the let­ter, Criston J Williams, who is rep­re­sent­ing the two con­vict­ed mur­der­ers–Lester Pit­man and Ger­ard Wil­son–told Roberts he in­tend­ed to send a com­plaint to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, ask­ing her to ex­er­cise her dis­cre­tion un­der Sec­tion 137 of the Con­sti­tu­tion to ad­vise Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona to ini­ti­ate im­peach­ment pro­ceed­ings against Archie for his role in the de­lays.

Williams is al­so con­tend­ing that the de­lay of more than three years in the judg­ments have breached his clients' con­sti­tu­tion­al rights. Williams has giv­en the Ju­di­cia­ry sev­en days to re­spond to the let­ter be­fore he writes to the PM.

Oth­er re­spons­es

Se­nior Coun­sel Is­rael Khan said while the de­lays were a cause of con­cern, he did not think im­peach­ment pro­ceed­ings against the Chief Jus­tice were nec­es­sary but he ques­tioned Ma­haraj's as­ser­tion that the move was po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed."He is speak­ing with a po­lit­i­cal mind and not that of a con­cerned for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al," Khan said.Khan said un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion, ac­cused peo­ple were guar­an­teed a fair tri­al but not a speedy one.

"While it may be a con­cern with the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion and lawyers, there must be a good rea­son for the de­lays in those cas­es," Khan said.Like Ma­haraj, Khan sug­gest­ed there was need for re­form in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, which, he said, would help re­duce de­lays in crim­i­nal tri­als.An e-mail was sent to Law As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Seenath Jairam ask­ing for a com­ment but he had not re­spond­ed up to late yes­ter­day.

The T&T Guardian at­tempt­ed to con­tact sev­er­al oth­er se­nior lawyers for com­ment but they all said they could not com­ment as they were in­volved in some of the out­stand­ing ap­peals in one way or an­oth­er.Calls to the Ju­di­cia­ry's in­for­ma­tion and pro­to­col man­ag­er Jones P Madeira went unan­swered.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored