Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Jus­tice Min­is­ter De­vesh Ma­haraj says Gov­ern­ment will be meet­ing with Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie soon in the hope of un­der­stand­ing the state of courts around the coun­try and oth­er re­lat­ed is­sues.

The an­nounce­ment came hours af­ter Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Is­rael Khan, SC, yes­ter­day called on the Chief Jus­tice to ex­plain why vir­tu­al courts are still op­er­at­ing out of po­lice sta­tions.

Khan raised the is­sue af­ter Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der called on the Ju­di­cia­ry to va­cate po­lice sta­tions.

“All the mag­is­trate’s courts are closed. That’s the more im­por­tant thing, you know. Why is it that mag­is­trates’ courts are closed down? What hap­pened to the bil­lions of dol­lars that the gov­ern­ment is giv­ing the Ju­di­cia­ry?

“I think the Chief Jus­tice needs to give an ex­pla­na­tion. COVID is no longer here. Why is he us­ing the po­lice sta­tion as a court, as a cour­t­house?” Khan said.

Alexan­der had pre­vi­ous­ly said that un­der the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers phi­los­o­phy, the Ju­di­cia­ry should op­er­ate in its own space, away from the po­lice.

Speak­ing af­ter the mat­ter was raised again at the post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Alexan­der said courts use crit­i­cal rooms at po­lice sta­tions such as in­ter­view rooms and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion rooms. He said the Min­is­ter of Jus­tice Ma­haraj is as­sist­ing in ad­dress­ing this is­sue.

Ma­haraj said the Ju­di­cia­ry gave an in­ter­im re­port on the sta­tus of court re­pairs and con­struc­tion, with all be­hind sched­ule.

He said a meet­ing with the Chief Jus­tice was cru­cial and will be on the cards very soon to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion.

Mean­while, Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, ASP Gideon Dick­son, said the as­so­ci­a­tion has been try­ing for the past two years to re­gain full con­trol of po­lice sta­tions and have courts re­turn to des­ig­nat­ed ju­di­cial build­ings.

He said there is no longer a need for vir­tu­al courts to op­er­ate out of po­lice sta­tions and apart from the se­cu­ri­ty risk of hav­ing wit­ness­es and ac­cused com­min­gling in po­lice sta­tions, there is al­so the fi­nan­cial bur­den of main­tain­ing the space al­lot­ted for the court.

“We ought not to be the per­sons who are en­forc­ing the law and then have to man­age that par­tic­u­lar space, up­keep that par­tic­u­lar space as it re­lates to its readi­ness to pro­vide jus­tice to the per­son, whether that per­son be an of­fend­er, whether the per­son be a wit­ness, whether the per­son be a pros­e­cu­tor in the mat­ter,” Dick­son said.

“There should al­ways be the per­cep­tion of a fair and eq­ui­table dis­place­ment of jus­tice.”

Dick­son said po­lice sta­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly the new­er ones, were not built with vir­tu­al courts in mind and some are now cramped while sev­er­al cour­t­hous­es re­main un­in­hab­it­ed.

He said: “It is pass­ing strange, and at­tempts to get the courts back at the court con­tin­ue to be met with some bu­reau­crat­ic chal­lenges, so the sig­nal by the new Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty that the spaces ought to re­turn to where they re­side, to me is our best po­si­tion, es­pe­cial­ly in the dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice to all.”

Dick­son said while the Ju­di­cia­ry had ex­pend­ed time and re­sources to meet the needs of vir­tu­al hear­ings at po­lice sta­tions, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice did not equal­ly par­tic­i­pate.

“Monies, time, train­ing and ef­forts were al­ready made to bring the Ju­di­cia­ry up to a par­tic­u­lar space and the Po­lice Ser­vice had a par­al­lel re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to do sim­i­lar­ly with our labour force.”