SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Two at­tor­neys yes­ter­day wel­comed re­tired Jus­tice Stan­ley John’s call for a com­plete re­struc­tur­ing of the Civ­il Law De­part­ment (CLD) of the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs.

At­tor­neys Avory Sinanan, SC, and Om Lal­la said they hoped that rec­om­men­da­tion would not be put on a shelf to gath­er dust.

They were re­spond­ing to John’s re­cent rec­om­men­da­tion af­ter a five-month probe in­to the State’s fail­ure to de­fend a ma­li­cious claim by nine men ac­cused of kid­nap­ping and mur­der­ing busi­ness­woman Vin­dra Naipual-Cool­man in 2006, which led to the men be­ing award­ed a to­tal of $20 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion by High Court Mas­ter Martha Alexan­der in Jan­u­ary.

John said the over­haul would avoid any re-oc­cur­rence of miss­ing files. It en­tails dig­i­tal­is­ing most of the work and get­ting rid of the pa­per.

The rec­om­men­da­tion was con­tained in a de­tailed 60-page re­port hand­ed to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour on Thurs­day.

In Feb­ru­ary, John and re­tired Jus­tice Rol­ston Nel­son were ap­point­ed by Ar­mour to ad­vise the State on the way for­ward, fol­low­ing the court’s award.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Sinanan said in his 43 years of prac­tice “we have al­ways felt that there have been bu­reau­crat­ic de­lays in the AG’s of­fice ... par­tic­u­lar­ly the Civ­il Law De­part­ment. Had the AG’s de­part­ment been keep­ing things un­der a mon­i­tor, what took place may not have hap­pened and clear­ly, there may not have been any need for Mr John to get in­volved.”

He said go­ing for­ward a re­view of the CLD must be un­der­tak­en and “it has to be a work in progress.”

Ac­cord­ing to Sinanan, for decades de­part­ments have op­er­at­ed un­der the same sys­tems which be­come fos­silised “and no­body had cause to put it un­der a mi­cro­scope to see whether it is work­ing or not un­til a cri­sis like this hap­pened.”

He added, “I think re­al­ly it’s a lega­cy of how the AG’s de­part­ment op­er­at­ed since 1962 when we be­came in­de­pen­dent. Maybe we have had piece­meal re­form here and there. I don’t think any­body, group, or com­mit­tee looked at the mon­i­tor­ing per­for­mance and see if it was re­al­ly work­ing.”

Sinanan said John would have gone some depth in­to the op­er­a­tion of the CLD to iden­ti­fy and di­ag­nose cer­tain ills which he felt re­quired ur­gent cor­rec­tion.

“It is a step in the right di­rec­tion. Let’s hope that that re­port is not go­ing to go on a shelf and gath­er dust but rather be act­ed up­on,” he said.

Lal­la said the fail­ure in the Naipaul-Cool­man mat­ter was a se­ri­ous in­dict­ment on the AG’s of­fice.

“And it re­mains a stain on that of­fice that has on­ly been high­light­ed be­cause of the pro­file of that par­tic­u­lar case,” he said.

Lal­la said one could on­ly imag­ine how many oth­er cas­es suf­fered the same fate with the State fail­ing in its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

“The re­port is wel­comed, as many oth­er re­ports, but it seems as though re­ports are of­ten used as plas­ters when is­sues arise and noth­ing hap­pens af­ter re­ports are done, sim­i­lar to com­mis­sions of en­quiries which are put on shelves and left to col­lect dust,” he said.

Most times, Lal­la said, re­ports tend to be”knee-jerk re­ac­tions to a cri­sis in the pub­lic do­main.”

He said things have changed over the years where the vol­ume of lit­i­ga­tion is far more than it was be­fore. The CLD has not been fac­ing new prob­lems, he not­ed.

“Any­one in prac­tice is fa­mil­iar with the de­fi­cien­cies of the sys­tem. But the bu­reau­cra­cy and the ap­proval from State au­thor­i­ties and Cab­i­net very of­ten to re­lease funds caus­es de­lays that do not al­low the sys­tem to keep up with the vol­ume of lit­i­ga­tion that is tak­ing place.”

Lal­la said the same ap­plied to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions De­part­ment which was un­der­staffed and over­whelmed.

“So we have se­ri­ous flaws in the sys­tem that are not ad­dressed. The Naipaul-Cool­man case was just an ex­am­ple of one of many de­fi­cien­cies in our ju­di­cial sys­tem.”

If we want to move things for­ward with our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, Lal­la said we don’t need re­ports and in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

“We need ac­tion, in­de­pen­dent ac­tion tak­ing place to bring the ju­di­cial sys­tem up to speed with 2023.”

The case that trig­gered the probe

High Court Mas­ter Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al or­dered $20 mil­lion com­pen­sa­tion for the nine ac­cused—Sher­von and De­von Pe­ters, their broth­er An­tho­ny Gloster, Joel Fras­er, Ronald Arm­strong, broth­ers Kei­da and Jameel Gar­cia, Mar­lon Trim­ming­ham, and An­to­nio Charles—when she de­liv­ered her de­ci­sion in their ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion case.

The group filed the law­suit al­most four years af­ter they were freed of the charges in May 2016.

The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al en­tered an ap­pear­ance in the case but failed to de­fend it, lead­ing the group’s le­gal team, led by for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, to suc­cess­ful­ly ob­tain a de­fault judg­ment against it in Jan­u­ary 2021.

UNC Sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al who was part of Ram­lo­gan’s le­gal team, told the Sun­day Guardian it was dif­fi­cult to com­ment on a re­port that has not been dis­closed.

“Giv­en the ab­surd al­le­ga­tion made by AG Ar­mour at his far­ci­cal press con­fer­ence that the file was “miss­ing” and the re­port­ed $800,000 spent on this in­ves­ti­ga­tion, a se­cret in­ves­ti­ga­tion to pro­duce a se­cret re­port makes no sense af­ter all the ridicu­lous in­sin­u­a­tions made by Ar­mour. The pub­lic has paid for this and the pub­lic has a right to know whether Ar­mour was ly­ing when he said the file went miss­ing.”

She main­tained that the file could not pos­si­bly have been miss­ing be­cause court doc­u­ments are filed elec­tron­i­cal­ly.

“Fur­ther, the AG was rep­re­sent­ed by As­sis­tant So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al (now judge) Karen Reid who ful­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in the tri­al and could not do so with­out a file.

“It is clear to me that this in­ves­ti­ga­tion is part of the po­lit­i­cal modus operan­di of the gov­ern­ment to do dam­age con­trol. This in­ves­ti­ga­tion was de­signed to dis­tract pub­lic pres­sure, take the heat off Ar­mour and buy time.”

Lutch­me­di­al called on the AG to make this re­port pub­lic and clear the air.

“It is dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand John’s call for an over­haul to pre­vent files from go­ing miss­ing be­cause all court doc­u­ments are filed and served elec­tron­i­cal­ly via email and it is easy to sim­ply email the Reg­is­trar and get copies of any doc­u­ment that you do not have—how on earth can it go “miss­ing’? This sounds very much like throw­ing the hard-work­ing state lawyers un­der the bus to save Ar­mour from the ob­vi­ous egg on his face as there was nev­er any “miss­ing file” in the first place.”

She said, “If there was neg­li­gence, has the cul­prit(s) been iden­ti­fied? Has dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion been rec­om­mend­ed?”