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Wednesday, July 30, 2025

CJ claims in two-hour meeting with judges: Plot to get me out

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20131209

Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie re­port­ed­ly made the bold claim yes­ter­day that he be­lieved there was an or­ches­trat­ed con­spir­a­cy to get him out of of­fice. He made the claim be­fore the ma­jor­i­ty of the coun­try's 40 Supreme Court judges.Re­li­able ju­di­cial sources told the T&T Guardian that Archie's state­ment stunned some of the judges who had gath­ered at the Hall of Jus­tice, Port-of-Spain, for a meet­ing.

No­tice for yes­ter­day's meet­ing was is­sued on Fri­day and came af­ter a se­ries of news­pa­per ar­ti­cles ques­tion­ing the over­seas trav­el of the Chief Jus­tice, the de­lay by Archie and the Court of Ap­peal in de­liv­er­ing cer­tain judg­ments and the fail­ure of the Ju­di­cia­ry to fast-track civ­il lit­i­ga­tion ini­ti­at­ed by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion against for­mer pub­lic of­fi­cials ac­cused of mis­man­age­ment and fraud.

It al­so fol­lowed a le­gal threat last Thurs­day by two death row in­mates–Lester Pit­man and Ger­ard Wil­son–to trig­ger im­peach­ment pro­ceed­ings against the Chief Jus­tice on the ba­sis of mis­con­duct, ow­ing to his fail­ure to de­liv­er judg­ments in their cas­es for al­most four years.

In re­sponse to a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter sent by Pit­man's at­tor­ney to the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al on No­vem­ber 25, Chief State So­lic­i­tor Christophe Grant yes­ter­day stat­ed that three at­tor­neys from his de­part­ment–Sean Julien, Petal Alexan­der and Nisa Sim­mons–have been as­signed to ad­dress the con­cerns raised in Pit­man's le­gal let­ter.

"We have tak­en note of the very se­ri­ous is­sues raised in your afore­said let­ter and will en­deav­our to pro­vide an ex­pe­di­tious re­sponse to same with­in the usu­al time­lines for these sort of mat­ters," Grant wrote in his re­ply, which was copied to Sher­lanne Pierre, the ad­min­is­tra­tive sec­re­tary to the Chief Jus­tice.Yes­ter­day's meet­ing, which be­gan at 2 pm at the judge's com­mon room on the third floor of the Hall of Jus­tice, end­ed short­ly be­fore 4 pm.

Among the is­sues raised were me­dia leaks from the Ju­di­cia­ry and the pre­vi­ous­ly un­pub­lished sub­mis­sions to the Na­tion­al Con­sti­tu­tion Re­form Com­mis­sion by Jus­tice Car­ol Gob­in, which sug­gest­ed that the salaries of tardy judges should be with­held.At yes­ter­day's meet­ing, Jus­tice Gob­in re­port­ed­ly de­fend­ed her right to speak in her pri­vate ca­pac­i­ty, re­li­able sources said.

Archie's con­spir­a­cy claim mir­rors the view of Sun­day Guardian colum­nist Max­ie Cuffie and for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, who both point­ed fin­gers at the Ex­ec­u­tive as be­ing be­hind a plot to re­move the Chief Jus­tice from of­fice.Cuffie stat­ed on Sun­day that it was clear to him "the gov­ern­ment was at­tempt­ing to ap­ply pres­sure through a me­dia cam­paign led by its prox­ies aimed at forc­ing him (Archie) to re­sign."

Ma­haraj, in an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian last Fri­day, said: "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."At the meet­ing, judges agreed to de­liv­er judg­ments in a more time­ly man­ner, sources said.

Pit­man's and Wil­son's cas­es

Pit­man was con­vict­ed in 2004 of the Cas­cade triple mur­ders. John Crop­per, 59; his moth­er-in-law Mag­gie Lee, 68; and sis­ter-in-law Lynette Lith­gow-Pear­son, 57, were found dead by po­lice on De­cem­ber 13, 2001 and the Ap­peal Court re­served its de­ci­sion in March 2010.Wil­son was sen­tenced to hang in 2001 for the mur­der of pen­sion­er Es­ther Mae Vi­dale, 77, and the Ap­peal Court re­served its de­ci­sion in his case in No­vem­ber 2009.

The Ap­peal Court in­tends to hand down its de­ci­sions in the Pit­man and Wil­son cas­es next Wednes­day.


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