Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

At to­day’s sit­ting of the Sen­ate the fo­cus will be on whether Gov­ern­ment’s con­tro­ver­sial amend­ment to ex­pand the Tri­al By Judge Alone law will be re­ferred to a Spe­cial Se­lect Com­mit­tee for deep­er ex­am­i­na­tion.

When the amend­ment was de­bat­ed in the Sen­ate last Fri­day, it at­tract­ed neg­a­tive feed­back from Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors as well as from the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (LATT) and the Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion. The LATT sent a let­ter to the Clerk of the Sen­ate with its con­cerns about the amend­ment.

Dur­ing last Fri­day’s de­bate, two In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors rec­om­mend­ed that the amend­ment be re­ferred to a Spe­cial Se­lect Com­mit­tee. Sources said that is a pos­si­bil­i­ty since Gov­ern­ment has been on the “back­foot” with the mat­ter.

The amend­ment is the sec­ond item list­ed on to­day’s Sen­ate agen­da fol­low­ing de­bate of an Act to sup­ple­ment and vary the 2023 Bud­get ap­pro­pri­a­tion by $3.8 bil­lion which will be pi­lot­ed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert.

Im­bert will speak on the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee’s pro­pos­al to sup­ple­ment 22 heads of ex­pen­di­ture for pay­ment of debts, up­grades, equip­ment, pur­chase of sup­plies and var­i­ous oth­er costs. The mo­tion and bill were passed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last Wednes­day.

The bill to amend the Ju­ry Act, Chap. 6:53 and the Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure Act, Chap. 12:02 to ex­pand Tri­al By Judge Alone (TB­JA) is aimed at re­duc­ing the back­log of cas­es in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem by in­tro­duc­ing ju­ry tri­als as the de­fault po­si­tion for all cap­i­tal and non-cap­i­tal in­dictable mat­ters, with the op­tion for an ac­cused to ap­ply to the court to be tried by a judge and ju­ry. It al­so pro­pos­es re­duced ju­ry sizes.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour pi­lot­ed de­bate on the amend­ment last Fri­day morn­ing and by that evening had start­ed wind­ing up de­bate af­ter a day of ar­gu­ments by Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors.

Of the 17 speak­ers who con­tributed to the de­bate, the amend­ment was ve­toed by Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al, Rishi Tri­pathi, Karuna Bis­ramns­ingh, Wade Mark and David Nakhid and In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors Evans Welch, An­tho­ny Vieira, Hazel Thomp­son-Ahye, Dr Maria Dil­lon-Re­my, Josh Dray­ton, Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh, De­oroop Teemul and Am­ri­ta De­onar­ine.

Vieira and Deyals­ingh rec­om­mend­ed that the amend­ment be ex­am­ined by a Spe­cial Se­lect or Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee. The first Tri­al By Judge Alone law was ex­am­ined by a Spe­cial Se­lect Com­mit­tee (SSC) be­fore it was passed in 2017.

Apart from Ar­mour, de­fend­ing the bill last week were Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors Renu­ka Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal and Ran­dall Mitchell.

The bill can be passed by a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty with Gov­ern­ment votes plus one In­de­pen­dent vote.

It is ex­pect­ed that af­ter con­clu­sion of de­bate on the Bud­get ap­pro­pri­a­tion at­ten­tion will re­turn to the TB­JA amend­ment. Ar­mour in his wind­ing up still has about 30 min­utes of speak­ing time.

If the bill is to be re­ferred to an SSC, Ar­mour will have to do that by in­vok­ing a stand­ing or­der. An SSC com­pris­es Gov­ern­ment, Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent mem­bers.

Last Fri­day, Ar­mour said he had ben­e­fit­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly from the con­tri­bu­tions by In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors.

He ex­plained that the bill isn’t a stand-alone piece of law but one of a se­ries. He ad­mit­ted that he should have ex­plained that the bill is the plat­form from which his Min­istry has been hav­ing con­sul­ta­tions with the Ju­di­cia­ry and oth­er stake­hold­ers.

Ar­mour said his Min­istry was en­cour­aged by the Ju­di­cia­ry to use it, a proven sys­tem that has evolved “where it’s clear that judge alone tri­als are en­abling the ju­di­cia­ry to move the pace of crim­i­nal tri­als at a rate that pre­vi­ous­ly hasn’t ex­ist­ed with judge and ju­ry tri­als.”

The AG said Gov­ern­ment isn’t ask­ing to abol­ish judge and ju­ry tri­als.

“What we’re say­ing is we have some­thing that’s demon­stra­bly prov­ing to be work­ing. Let’s im­prove it,” he said.