“Good rid­dance.”

That was the blunt re­ac­tion of head of the Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion, Is­rael Khan, SC, to re­ports that Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie may be con­sid­er­ing step­ping down ahead of sched­ule.

A Sun­day news­pa­per ar­ti­cle sug­gest­ed Archie was asked whether he planned to re­tire as head of the Ju­di­cia­ry and chair­man of the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion at the start of the 2025–2026 law term. He was quot­ed as say­ing he did not in­tend to demit of­fice in Sep­tem­ber.

“How­ev­er, if and when that de­ci­sion is made, I shall be hap­py to have a dis­cus­sion with you,” the Chief Jus­tice replied.

Archie, who turned 65 on Au­gust 18, has an­oth­er five years be­fore reach­ing the manda­to­ry re­tire­ment age of 70. The re­tire­ment age for judges was raised from 65 to 70 in 2020.

Khan, who has long been one of Archie’s most vo­cal crit­ics, wel­comed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of his de­par­ture.

“If he is re­tired, my com­ment will be good ra­di­ance; it’s time he leaves the ju­di­cia­ry be­cause the ju­di­cia­ry is in a to­tal mess.”

Khan sug­gest­ed Archie could be at­tempt­ing to pre-empt spec­u­la­tion that the Gov­ern­ment is weigh­ing whether to in­voke Sec­tion 137 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, which al­lows for the re­moval of judges on grounds of mis­be­hav­iour or in­ca­pac­i­ty, over his role in the Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar con­tro­ver­sy.

The Se­nior Coun­sel al­so re­newed con­cerns about the state of the na­tion’s courts, point­ing to de­layed mur­der tri­als that have left some ac­cused in­car­cer­at­ed for up to 15 years with­out a date set for tri­al.

He fur­ther high­light­ed more than 600 po­lice killings over the last 27 years and crit­i­cised the Chief Jus­tice for fail­ing to es­tab­lish a Coro­ner’s Court to de­ter­mine whether of­fi­cers act­ed law­ful­ly.

“So many out­stand­ing killings of cit­i­zens and noth­ing has been done since he came in­to of­fice,” Khan said.

De­spite the crit­i­cism, Khan ac­knowl­edged Archie’s ju­di­cial abil­i­ty.

“He is a very good ju­rist,” Khan said, be­fore adding that his “ap­petite for … and I will stop there” had caused his down­fall.

Khan said he had no in­ter­est in suc­ceed­ing Archie, as he is be­yond the qual­i­fy­ing age. He sug­gest­ed in­stead that the next Chief Jus­tice should come from with­in the Ju­di­cia­ry, nam­ing Jus­tices Mark Mo­hammed, Ge­of­frey Hen­der­son, and Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh as pos­si­ble suc­ces­sors.

A se­nior judge, speak­ing on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, al­so wel­comed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Archie’s de­par­ture.

“The ju­di­cia­ry is not at a place where it should be, and cit­i­zens de­serve bet­ter,” the judge said.

The judge claimed the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem was in chaos, with a se­vere back­log of tri­als and no clear sta­tis­tics on how many in-per­son hear­ings have tak­en place.

He ar­gued that the Mas­ters’ Court was func­tion­ing as “an in­flat­ed mag­is­trates’ court,” han­dling in­dictable of­fences that should prop­er­ly re­main be­fore mag­is­trates.

“But of course, mas­ters are paid 30 to 35 per­cent more than a mag­is­trate,” the judge com­plained.

In civ­il mat­ters, he said there was a “judg­ment cri­sis,” not­ing that a re­cent let­ter from the Chief Jus­tice re­vealed 435 out­stand­ing judg­ments among just 14 civ­il judges.

“This is out­ra­geous and demon­strates that the ju­di­cia­ry has op­er­at­ed, notwith­stand­ing re­cent salary in­creas­es, with­out the req­ui­site de­gree of ac­count­abil­i­ty and lead­er­ship,” he said.

The judge al­so crit­i­cised the con­tin­ued re­liance on vir­tu­al hear­ings, point­ing out that courts in San Fer­nan­do re­main large­ly non-func­tion­al.

“Cit­i­zens de­serve to be seen and to be heard,” the judge said.

He said a new Chief Jus­tice could be­gin to ad­dress these con­cerns, adding: “If there is a de­par­ture and a new Chief Jus­tice is ap­point­ed, then hope­ful­ly some of these mat­ters could be ad­dressed to the ben­e­fit of the cit­i­zens of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The CJ’s tenure has been marked by con­tro­ver­sy, in­clud­ing for­mer chief mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar, then new­ly ap­point­ed as a High Court judge who was forced to re­sign af­ter it emerged she had 53 mat­ters un­fin­ished.

This year, the Privy Coun­cil crit­i­cised Archie’s han­dling of the mat­ter, de­scrib­ing it as a sig­nif­i­cant fail­ing in ju­di­cial man­age­ment.

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions to the Chief Jus­tice, who had not re­spond­ed up to yes­ter­day evening. Jus­tice Min­is­ter De­vesh Ma­haraj al­so did not re­spond to calls or mes­sages.