Pros­e­cu­tors from the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) are yet to re­ceive a re­sponse to their let­ter call­ing on At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, to apol­o­gise for his crit­i­cism of their work.

On Tues­day, a group of pros­e­cu­tors de­liv­ered the let­ter to the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs while DPP Roger Gas­pard, SC, was locked in a meet­ing with Ar­mour. The cor­re­spon­dence was sent in re­sponse to state­ments made by Ar­mour to jour­nal­ists on March 11 in which he claimed the DPP’s Of­fice was un­der per­form­ing.

Ar­mour’s com­ments were in re­sponse to com­plaints from Gas­pard over the ef­fect of chron­ic staff short­ages on his of­fice’s abil­i­ty to pros­e­cute cas­es.

“That is an un­sat­is­fac­to­ry ex­pla­na­tion for un­der per­for­mance by the DPP. Oth­er crit­i­cal arms of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem are al­so op­er­at­ing be­low ca­pac­i­ty, yet far more ef­fec­tive­ly. We need to crit­i­cal­ly ex­am­ine what are the sys­temic is­sues that are ham­per­ing the per­for­mance of the DPP’s Of­fice,” he said.

In their let­ter, the pros­e­cu­tors de­scribed Ar­mour’s com­ments as un­for­tu­nate.

“They do not ac­cu­rate­ly re­flect the ef­forts and com­mit­ment of the staff at this Of­fice. These state­ments present a dis­tort­ed view of the ex­ist­ing re­al­i­ty and are like­ly to un­der­mine pub­lic con­fi­dence in this Of­fice,” they said.

They sought to raise six is­sues af­fect­ing the of­fice’s per­for­mance in­clud­ing an in­creased case-load, the in­tro­duc­tion of spe­cialised courts and hav­ing to re­spond to bail ap­pli­ca­tions from mur­der ac­cused.

“In or­der to meet these mount­ing de­mands, and de­spite our lim­it­ed hu­man re­sources, the staff has re­mained com­mit­ted to the per­for­mance of our du­ties to the high­est de­gree of pro­fes­sion­al­ism,” they said.

“Mem­bers of staff reg­u­lar­ly work long hours dur­ing the week, on week­ends and on pub­lic hol­i­days. This has se­vere­ly im­pact­ed not on­ly our per­son­al and fam­i­ly lives but al­so our men­tal and emo­tion­al health,” they added.

They al­so raised con­cerns over a move to re­lo­cate the of­fice from Rich­mond Street to the cor­ner of Park and Hen­ry Street in Port-of-Spain.

Re­fer­ring to a T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) re­port ad­vis­ing against the move, they said: “Giv­en the fact that the Spe­cial Branch Unit is spe­cialised in the as­sess­ment of a range of se­cu­ri­ty threats for ex­ec­u­tives, in­clud­ing the Pres­i­dent and our own knowl­edge of the lo­ca­tion of that build­ing, we, the at­tor­neys, are un­will­ing to oc­cu­py the Park Court Build­ing, where we are like­ly to be the sub­jects of crim­i­nal at­tacks.”

“This is es­pe­cial­ly so as many of us have al­ready suf­fered the trau­ma of per­ilous en­coun­ters with ac­cused per­sons, their as­so­ciates and fam­i­lies.”

In a press re­lease on Thurs­day, the Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion (CBA) alsso call for Ar­mour to re­tract his state­ment. “The CBA takes note of the mount­ing de­mands put on the DPP at­tor­neys and that thus far the DPP at­tor­neys have re­mained com­mit­ted to the per­for­mance of their du­ties with the high­est de­gree of pro­fes­sion­al­ism,” it said.

The as­so­ci­a­tion point­ed out that while there has been the in­creased ap­point­ment of ju­di­cial of­fi­cers and the es­tab­lish­ment of the Pub­lic De­fend­ers’ De­part­ment, there was no strength­en­ing of the DPP’s Of­fice.

“The CBA wish­es to warn the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al that if the DPP con­cerns are not ad­dressed it is like­ly that the en­tire crim­i­nal jus­tice tri­al sys­tem may grind to a halt, which would re­sult in mil­lions of pub­lic funds be­ing wast­ed on judges, mas­ters, pub­lic de­fend­ers but with no tri­als to do as the DPP at­tor­neys will be un­able to per­form their du­ties due to lim­it­ed re­sources,” it said.

It called on its mem­bers to sup­port their col­leagues in the DPP’s Of­fice by ac­ced­ing to rea­son­able re­quests for ad­journ­ments in cas­es.