Derek Achong

Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie has re­peat­ed­ly de­nied that he threat­ened or forced for­mer chief mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar to re­sign as a High Court Judge.

While un­der cross-ex­am­i­na­tion from Ay­ers-Cae­sar’s lawyer Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, in her con­tin­u­ing case against him and the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vices Com­mis­sion (JLSC) yes­ter­day, Archie was forced to con­tin­u­ous­ly de­ny that he co­erced her res­ig­na­tion amid pub­lic furore over the 53 part-heard cas­es she had left up­on tak­ing up her then-new post in April 2017.

Archie not­ed that the JLSC had de­cid­ed that Ay­ers-Cae­sar’s con­duct in al­leged­ly mis­rep­re­sent­ing her un­fin­ished case­load could po­ten­tial­ly war­rant dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion, but felt she should be giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to atone for her er­ror.

“She had lost cred­i­bil­i­ty and trust and the on­ly way to re­store that was to ac­cept re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and go back and fix the mat­ters,” Archie said.

He ad­mit­ted that pri­or to her ap­point­ment, she in­formed the JLSC that her staff had told her she on­ly had 28 un­fin­ished cas­es. He said he was giv­en the im­pres­sion that the cas­es were at a pre­lim­i­nary stage and could eas­i­ly be restart­ed be­fore an­oth­er mag­is­trate with­out much in­con­ve­nience.

How­ev­er, Archie said he lat­er learned from Ay­ers-Cae­sar’s suc­ces­sor, Chief Mag­is­trate Maria Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle, that the num­ber was high­er and some of the cas­es in­volved peo­ple who had been on re­mand for up to sev­en years.

He said the dis­crep­an­cy in the fig­ures pro­vid­ed was of more con­cern than gen­er­al pub­lic crit­i­cism of the un­fin­ished cas­es.

“My con­sid­er­a­tion would have been the dis­crep­an­cy be­tween the two lists and the ex­pla­na­tions up to that point were, in my mind, quite un­sat­is­fac­to­ry and in­cred­i­ble,” he said.

Archie claimed that he mere­ly sought to give Ay­ers-Cae­sar an op­tion to save her rep­u­ta­tion fol­low­ing the “ug­ly sit­u­a­tion” and she freely ac­cept­ed it.

“I sought to ap­peal to her con­science and her sense of pro­fes­sion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty,” Archie said.

“I did in­di­cate that her po­si­tion was re­al­ly quite ug­ly and she might want to con­sid­er step­ping down and fin­ish­ing her mat­ters. I was speak­ing as her boss and, at the time, her friend.”

He al­so re­peat­ed­ly de­nied that Ay­ers-Cae­sar was hand­ed a pre­pared res­ig­na­tion let­ter and a press re­lease an­nounc­ing her de­ci­sion, or that she was pres­sured in­to ac­cept­ing.

“As the head of an or­gan­i­sa­tion, one of­ten has dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions with per­sons not liv­ing up to their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in the way they should. One does have these dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions from time to time but I won’t char­ac­terise that as putting pres­sure,” he said.

Con­front­ed by min­utes from a JLSC meet­ing pri­or to his fi­nal dis­cus­sion with Ay­ers-Cae­sar, which Ma­haraj claimed showed it had made a de­ci­sion to ini­ti­ate dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings if she failed to take their sug­ges­tion, Archie claimed there was no ul­ti­ma­tum, as they would still have to have sep­a­rate con­sid­er­a­tions on the next course of ac­tion.

He al­so not­ed that the JLSC could not sim­ply re­move her or rec­om­mend that her ap­point­ment be re­voked as sug­gest­ed by her.

Asked why he went to Pres­i­dent’s House when Ay­ers-Cae­sar went there to hand-de­liv­er her res­ig­na­tion let­ter to then-Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona, he said he was on­ly be­ing sup­port­ive.

Archie al­so ad­mit­ted that he had lim­it­ed dis­cus­sions with Car­mona on the is­sue, as he was con­cerned as he had ex­e­cut­ed her ap­point­ment. He claimed he did not re­veal con­fi­den­tial de­tails and the even­tu­al sug­gest­ed course of ac­tion.

Archie said when Ay­ers-Cae­sar and Car­mona even­tu­al­ly met, she was emo­tion­al and he (Car­mona) too had tears in his eyes.

There were nu­mer­ous tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties with the vir­tu­al hear­ing yes­ter­day, with Archie even chim­ing in to sug­gest that the is­sue with band­width was caused by the fact that 200 peo­ple, most of whom were not di­rect­ly in­volved in the case, were logged in­to the sys­tem, which was de­signed to com­fort­ably ac­com­mo­date less than half the num­ber of users.

Archie, who could not tes­ti­fy at his lawyer’s of­fice as he is in quar­an­tine for sev­en days, coughed in­ces­sant­ly through­out the hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice David Har­ris.

The tri­al is ex­pect­ed to con­clude to­day when the JLSC’s wit­ness­es - its sec­re­tary Coomarie Goolab­s­ingh and Archie’s for­mer as­so­ciates and cur­rent High Court Mas­ters Sher­lanne Pierre and Jade Ro­driguez - are cross-ex­am­ined.

ABOUT THE CASE

Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar was ap­point­ed a High Court Judge in April 2017 but two weeks lat­er, af­ter pub­lic crit­i­cism over the back­log in cas­es she had left be­hind in the Mag­is­trates’ Court, she re­signed from the post.

Ay­ers-Cae­sar then filed a law­suit in which she claimed that she was pres­sured by Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie and the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vices Com­mis­sion (JLSC) in­to re­sign­ing. She al­so con­tend­ed that for­mer Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona, who is al­so a for­mer High Court Judge, re­fused to in­ter­vene af­ter she in­formed him of Archie and the JLSC’s con­duct.

Archie and the JLSC have de­nied any wrong­do­ing and have claimed that Ay­ers-Cae­sar’s fail­ure to dis­close her un­fin­ished case­load was suf­fi­cient­ly se­ri­ous enough to war­rant a dis­ci­pli­nary in­quiry.

They al­so con­tend that Ay­ers-Cae­sar ac­cept­ed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and freely ten­dered her res­ig­na­tion with the in­ten­tion, at that time, to re­turn as a mag­is­trate to com­plete the part-heard cas­es be­fore tak­ing up her new High Court po­si­tion.

While Ay­ers-Cae­sar’s case was at a pre­lim­i­nary stage, the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al filed an in­ter­pre­ta­tion law­suit to help de­ter­mine what should hap­pen to her un­fin­ished case­load.

How­ev­er, most of the cas­es were restart­ed and com­plet­ed by Ay­ers-Cae­sar’s suc­ces­sor Maria Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle be­fore the case was de­ter­mined by High Court Judge Car­ol Gob­in last year.

Gob­in even­tu­al­ly ruled that all the cas­es would have to be restart­ed, as there was no le­gal pro­vi­sion for them to be com­plet­ed be­fore a fresh mag­is­trate.

Most, if not all, of the hand­ful of cas­es that were put on hold pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the case be­fore Gob­in have since been com­plet­ed.

Ay­ers-Cae­sar’s lawyers had ap­plied to cross-ex­am­ine Archie and three of the JLSC’s wit­ness­es - its sec­re­tary Coomarie Goolab­s­ingh and Archie’s for­mer as­so­ciates and cur­rent High Court Mas­ters Sher­lanne Pierre and Jade Ro­driguez.

How­ev­er, they were de­nied by Har­ris.

In April, last year, three of Archie’s col­leagues over­ruled Har­ris’ de­ci­sions on the cross-ex­am­i­na­tion.

The Court of Ap­peal’s de­ci­sion was up­held by the Privy Coun­cil in a sep­a­rate ap­peal. An ap­pli­ca­tion by the AG’s Of­fice to have Car­mona re­moved from the law­suit was al­so re­sist­ed and up­held by the Privy Coun­cil.

Ay­ers-Cae­sar is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, Ron­nie Bisses­sar and Vi­jaya Ma­haraj.

Archie and the JLSC are be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Rus­sell Mar­tineau, SC, Deb­o­rah Peake, SC, Ian Ben­jamin, SC, Ian Roach and Mar­celle Fer­di­nand.

Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, Ravi Nan­ga, Ravi Heffes-Doon, Zel­i­ca Haynes-Soo Hon and Di­ane Kat­wa­roo are rep­re­sent­ing the AG’s Of­fice.