An­na-Lisa Paul

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan in the con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion chal­leng­ing the re­peal of Sec­tion 34, yes­ter­day de­fend­ed it as they ar­gued that the claimants would be en­ti­tled to a fair tri­al whether or not the con­tro­ver­sial leg­is­la­tion ex­ist­ed.

Con­clud­ing his sub­mis­sions be­fore Jus­tice Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er in the Port-of-Spain High Court yes­ter­day, British QC Lord David Pan­nick, who is the State's lead at­tor­ney, said: "It is not the busi­ness of the court to as­sess par­lia­men­tary pro­ce­dure and if Par­lia­ment act­ed on pure log­ic."

He ar­gued that in T&T, the role of the court was to as­sess the Con­sti­tu­tion and its con­tent, as well as per­form­ing that role with­out "as­sess­ing the ad­e­qua­cy of the par­lia­men­tary process."

On Tues­day, Pan­nick said Gov­ern­ment on­ly re­pealed Sec­tion 34 of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Of­fences) Act af­ter the neg­a­tive pub­lic re­ac­tion to the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the two Pi­ar­co fraud en­quiries would be dis­con­tin­ued.

Say­ing yes­ter­day on­ly a few days had elapsed be­tween the en­act­ment and re­peal, Pan­nick claimed: "Noth­ing had hap­pened dur­ing that time which would im­pede a fair tri­al."

At­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing Steve Fer­gu­son, Ameer Edoo and Mar­itime Life and Gen­er­al Co Ltd are con­tend­ing there was a breach of due process af­ter Ram­lo­gan and the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard in­ter­fered in the ju­di­cial pro­ceed­ings which al­ready were un­der­way, fol­low­ing the procla­ma­tion of Sec­tion 34.

Say­ing the "bur­den" was now on the shoul­ders of the claimants to show how the leg­is­la­tion act­ed out­side its in­tend­ed scope, Pan­nick said Par­lia­ment could con­clude pub­lic con­fi­dence would be un­der­mined if peo­ple ac­cused of se­ri­ous crimes es­caped jus­tice.

He added the ret­ro­spec­tive re­peal did not pre­vent the ac­cused de­fend­ing crim­i­nal charges based on their own mer­its, while "the un­fair­ness to the claimants is min­i­mal, giv­en the re­peal of Sec­tion 34, as they would sim­ply face a fair tri­al in this ju­ris­dic­tion."

Sec­tion 34 in Court day 4

Re­fer­ring to the sub­mis­sion by Se­nior Coun­sel Sophia Chote, who is rep­re­sent­ing Edoo, that the DPP's con­duct had amount­ed to an abuse of process, Pan­nick said: "It is not the DPP or AG who de­cid­ed to re­peal Sec­tion 34, it was Par­lia­ment."

Pan­nick said the DPP was op­er­at­ing with­in his scope of au­thor­i­ty when he ad­vised the AG.

Re­fer­ring to the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers, which the claimants' at­tor­neys ar­gued had been breached, Pan­nick said a sim­i­lar is­sue would arise if the claimants' at­tor­neys in­sist­ed on the court in­ter­pret­ing the leg­is­la­tion and its in­tent.

Pan­nick con­clud­ed that the leg­is­la­tion which re­pealed Sec­tion 34 had not breached the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of the de­fen­dants and it was up to the court to as­sess the con­sti­tu­tion­al va­lid­i­ty of it, which should not in­ter­fere with the court's abil­i­ty to de­ter­mine guilt.

The mat­ter con­tin­ues to­day.