Dar­ren Ba­haw

Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie has sum­moned judges to an im­por­tant meet­ing to­day at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain in the face of what ju­di­cia­ry sources say is an "un­pro­voked as­sault" on the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice.But oth­er se­nior prac­ti­tion­ers and some judges main­tain that the de­mand for long-await­ed judg­ments be­fore the Court of Ap­peal is jus­ti­fied and should not be seen as an at­tack on the ju­di­cia­ry or the Chief Jus­tice.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan has pub­licly crit­i­cised the ju­di­cia­ry for fail­ing to fast-track civ­il cas­es where for­mer pub­lic of­fi­cials are ac­cused of fraud.The meet­ing among the judges al­so comes on the heels of the lat­est Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion (SRC) re­port which, sources say, has rec­om­mend­ed a sub­stan­tial in­crease in the hous­ing al­lowance from $10,500 to more than $20,000, which would al­low judges to rent "su­per-grade" hous­es, and would al­so give them a re­port­ed 15 per cent salary in­crease.

Judges have long main­tained that they are en­ti­tled to a hous­ing al­lowance which would al­low them to rent su­per-grade hous­es. At present, on­ly the Chief Jus­tice oc­cu­pies a su­per-grade house, at Good­wood Park, Glen­coe.In the past, as part of their terms and con­di­tions, judges were al­lowed to oc­cu­py hous­es at Fed­er­a­tion Park, Port-of-Spain but un­der the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR) ad­min­is­tra­tion in the 1980s, that pro­vi­sion was tak­en away and the judges were grant­ed a hous­ing al­lowance.

The SRC re­port was sched­uled to be laid in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day but par­lia­men­tary sources told the T&T Guardian that it had not been pre­sent­ed.Over the last few weeks, sev­er­al sto­ries be­gan sur­fac­ing in the print me­dia, ques­tion­ing the over­seas trav­el of the Chief Jus­tice and his tar­di­ness in de­liv­er­ing judg­ments in both civ­il and crim­i­nal ap­peals.Ju­di­cia­ry sources said they viewed the sto­ries as a cam­paign against the Chief Jus­tice to dri­ve him out of of­fice.

A sto­ry in last week's Sun­shine news­pa­per claimed Archie was about to quit his job to take up a ju­di­cial ap­point­ment in Dubai, in the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates. But sources close to Archie last week dis­missed the re­port as un­true. The ru­mour had been mak­ing its rounds in top le­gal and ju­di­cial cir­cles over the last few weeks.

More re­cent­ly, two death row in­mates--Lester Pit­man, who was con­vict­ed of the Cas­cade triple mur­ders, and Ger­ard Wil­son--wrote to the Reg­is­trar of the Supreme Court, Maris­sa Robert­son, threat­en­ing to pe­ti­tion the Prime Min­is­ter to im­peach the Chief Jus­tice. The Ap­peal Court re­served its de­ci­sion in March 2010 and No­vem­ber 2009, re­spec­tive­ly, in those cas­es.

Last Thurs­day, in a le­gal let­ter, Criston Williams, the at­tor­ney rep­re­sent­ing the two con­vict­ed killers, threat­ened to file a con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion against Archie and the ju­di­cia­ry, be­cause the de­lays al­leged­ly breached his clients' con­sti­tu­tion­al rights. To sup­port his claim, Williams list­ed 25 crim­i­nal ap­peals dealt with by the Ap­peal Court over the past 15 years, in which judg­ments were de­liv­ered with­in a year of the hear­ing of the ap­peal.

In re­sponse, the Law As­so­ci­a­tion ex­pressed "deep con­cern" about the in­or­di­nate de­lay in the de­liv­ery of judg­ments and said it was is­su­ing a "clar­i­on call" to the Ju­di­cia­ry to treat the de­lay is­sue as a pri­or­i­ty.Archie, who presided over both ap­peals with two oth­er ap­pel­late judges, has promised to de­liv­er the writ­ten judg­ments be­fore the Christ­mas break starts next week. The Ap­peal Court has giv­en no­tice that the de­ci­sion in Wil­son's case will be hand­ed down on De­cem­ber 18.

Ju­di­cia­ry: we're cut­ting down de­lays

Ac­cord­ing to the 2013-2014 an­nu­al re­port of the Ju­di­cia­ry, the de­liv­ery of jus­tice has reached an all-time high. The fig­ures shows a marked in­crease in the clear­ance rate from 385 in the last pe­ri­od to 548 this year."This is large­ly a re­sult of the in­crease in non-com­pli­ance mat­ters list­ed and dis­posed dur­ing the pe­ri­od," the re­port states.The Ap­peal Court rou­tine­ly dis­miss­es these mat­ters, which are not filed in keep­ing with the rules of court.

Non-com­pli­ance mat­ters spiked this year from ze­ro in 2011-2012 to 167 in this term, which the re­port de­scribed as a "sig­nif­i­cant" in­crease.Ac­cord­ing to the ju­di­cia­ry re­port, 5,230 civ­il mat­ters were filed at the High Court in the 2012-2013 term alone and de­ter­mi­na­tions were made on 5,245.