Richard Lord

For­mer jus­tice min­is­ter and judge Her­bert Vol­ney ad­mit­ted in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day he had made an er­ror in the Brad Boyce case.His ad­mis­sion came dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to yes­ter­day's House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives de­bate on a mo­tion of no con­fi­dence in Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, brought by Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Vol­ney in 1998 di­rect­ed a nine-mem­ber ju­ry to re­turn a not guilty ver­dict in the case against Boyce, who was be­ing tried for the un­law­ful killing of Ja­son John­son. There have since been sev­er­al protests against the rul­ing.Yes­ter­day Vol­ney raised the mat­ter in Par­lia­ment, say­ing: "I made an er­ror. I ad­mit I made an er­ror."Op­po­si­tion MPs seemed tak­en aback by the com­ment.

Vol­ney added: "There was the Court of Ap­peal to cor­rect me. They too made an er­ror and by the time it got to the Privy Coun­cil, the case was ten years old and the Privy Coun­cil said the case was too old to be re­tried."He raised the mat­ter to dis­miss claims from the Op­po­si­tion that the procla­ma­tion of Sec­tion 34 of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act, 2011 was done to ben­e­fit for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress fi­nanciers.

"So this Sec­tion 34 was not about any par­tic­u­lar per­sons, it was about restor­ing, as a mat­ter of prin­ci­ple, the bal­ance be­tween the right of the State to pros­e­cute and the right of the cit­i­zens to the pro­tec­tion of law."He said the leg­is­la­tion was in­tend­ed to en­sure that the ac­cused was tried with­in a rea­son­able time.He said that de­vel­op­ment would as­sist in get­ting fam­i­lies back to­geth­er and for vic­tims to not have to re­live the trau­ma sev­er­al years lat­er.

Vol­ney said Sec­tion 34 was al­so in­tend­ed to en­sure that "the DPP would get down to do­ing his work in a time­ly way."He told leg­is­la­tors: "True, his (DPP's) wings were be­ing clipped and there start­ed the be­gin­ning of what led to my down­fall. I start­ed to clip cer­tain peo­ple's wings."