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Saturday, July 5, 2025

Judge orders restart of Ayers-Caesar cases

by

Derek Achong
2366 days ago
20190112

All the cas­es left un­fin­ished by for­mer chief mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar, when she con­tro­ver­sial­ly took up a ju­di­cial post in 2017, had to be restart­ed.

This was the de­ci­sion of Jus­tice Car­ol Gob­in in the State’s in­ter­pre­ta­tion sum­mons on op­tions avail­able in cir­cum­stances where ju­di­cial of­fi­cers demit of­fice with part-heard cas­es be­fore them. Gob­in de­liv­ered a draft judg­ment in the case last Fri­day but on­ly re­leased a fi­nal edit­ed ver­sion on Wednes­day.

The de­ci­sion is now large­ly aca­d­e­m­ic as all but two of the 53 cas­es left un­fin­ished by Ay­ers-Cae­sar were restart­ed or com­plet­ed while the case be­fore Gob­in was still pend­ing. The two re­main­ing cas­es in­volve two groups of five and three men, who are on re­mand for mur­ders which oc­curred in 2010 and 2012.

At­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing those ac­cused were on­ly in­formed of the de­ci­sion when the cas­es came up for hear­ing be­fore Ay­ers-Cae­sar’s suc­ces­sor, Chief Mag­is­trate Maria Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle, in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court yes­ter­day morn­ing.

The ac­cused could not be in­formed in per­son as they were not trans­port­ed to court for the hear­ing due to strin­gent se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures as­so­ci­at­ed with hear­ings of the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry of a group of men ac­cused of mur­der­ing Se­nior Coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal.

In the 22-page judg­ment, Gob­in said nei­ther the Sum­ma­ry Court Act nor the In­dictable Of­fences (Pre­lim­i­nary En­quiry) Act gives the pow­er to con­tin­ue a part-heard case be­fore a dif­fer­ent mag­is­trate. She al­so con­sid­ered sev­er­al Com­mon­wealth cas­es in which sim­i­lar propo­si­tions were re­ject­ed, as she ruled that the cas­es would have to restart.

“This is what the law re­quires and as the case law es­tab­lish­es it has so far been recog­nised as an im­por­tant mech­a­nism to pro­tect the Con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of an ac­cused per­son to a fair tri­al and hear­ing,” she said.

As a sec­ondary is­sue in the case, Gob­in was asked to rule on a ju­di­cial re­view ap­pli­ca­tion from Akil­li Charles, a man ac­cused of mur­der whose pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry be­fore Ay­ers-Cae­sar was at an ad­vanced stage when she left her post to take up a po­si­tion as a High Court Judge in April 2017. Charles, who al­leged­ly spent more than $150,000 in le­gal fees dur­ing the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry, claimed it would be op­pres­sive to him and oth­er ac­cused per­sons.

Hav­ing ruled that there is no oth­er op­tion but to restart the case, Gob­in re­ject­ed Charles’ ap­pli­ca­tion. How­ev­er, she de­scribed what tran­spired and how it af­fect­ed Charles and the oth­er ac­cused per­sons as a trav­es­ty of jus­tice.

“The stain on the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice will re­main in­deli­ble long af­ter the cries and protests of jus­ti­fi­ably an­gry suf­fer­ing pris­on­ers have gone qui­et and long af­ter the fam­i­lies of vic­tims who, too, have been wait­ing for jus­tice to be done, re­sign them­selves to fur­ther de­lay,” Gob­in said.

She went on: “It may go some small way to al­le­vi­at­ing the pain and in­jus­tice of this on all sides if those re­spon­si­ble are held to ac­count.”

As part of the judge­ment, Gob­in sought to give ad­vice to the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (JLSC) on how a sim­i­lar cir­cum­stance can be avoid­ed when mag­is­trates are pro­mot­ed in the fu­ture. She said each prospec­tive can­di­dates should be first asked how many part-heard cas­es they have.

“This, of course, should be backed by a sys­tem which can ver­i­fy the an­swer. In­deed one would think that the state of a mag­is­trate’s list, es­pe­cial­ly the state of the part-heard list, would be an im­por­tant in­di­ca­tor of the can­di­date’s time and case man­age­ment skills,” she said.

Al­though Charles’ claim was dis­missed, Gob­in still ruled that he was en­ti­tled to part of the le­gal costs from the State as she ruled that his in­volve­ment was rea­son­able in the cir­cum­stances. She al­so sug­gest­ed that Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle con­sid­er re­cus­ing her­self from Charles’ new pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry based on her pre­vi­ous in­volve­ment while the in­ter­pre­ta­tion case was pend­ing.

“It is enough that in Mr Charles’ un­for­tu­nate cir­cum­stances that this might re­store some part of his faith in the sys­tem,” she said.

The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was rep­re­sent­ed by Gilbert Pe­ter­son, SC, Ja­son Mootoo and Rishi Dass, while Michael Quam­i­na rep­re­sent­ed Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle. Elaine Green rep­re­sent­ed the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion (DPP).

Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Ger­ald Ramdeen and Ganesh Sa­roop rep­re­sent­ed Charles.

The Law As­so­ci­a­tion and Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion were rep­re­sent­ed by There­sa Hadad and Ra­jiv Per­sad.

Time­line

April 12, 2007—Chief Mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar sworn in as a High Court judge along with two oth­er mag­is­trates. Some of the ac­cused per­sons af­fect­ed by the 53 cas­es left un­fin­ished by Ay­ers-Cae­sar staged a near ri­ot as they reap­peared be­fore Ay­ers-Cae­sar’s suc­ces­sor, then act­ing Chief Mag­is­trate Maria Bus­by-Ear­le Cad­dle.

April 27, 2017—Ay­ers-Cae­sar ten­ders her res­ig­na­tion amid pub­lic furore over her un­fin­ished case-load. The Ju­di­cia­ry is­sues a press re­lease say­ing Ay­ers-Cae­sar would re­turn as a mag­is­trate to com­plete her part-heard cas­es.

May 9, 2017—The Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (JLSC) head­ed by Chief Ivor Archie is­sues its own press re­lease in which it states that Ay­ers-Cae­sar will not be re­turn­ing to the mag­is­te­r­i­al bench. Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle in­forms those whose cas­es were af­fect­ed that they will have to be restart­ed be­fore her and oth­er mag­is­trates.

June 1, 2017—The Law As­so­ci­a­tion pass­es a mo­tion of no con­fi­dence in Archie and the JLSC call­ing for them to re­sign over their han­dling of the Ay­ers-Cae­sar case.

Ju­ly 2017—Ay­ers-Cae­sar files a law­suit against Archie and the JLSC claim­ing she was pres­sured to re­sign. The case is still pend­ing. JLSC mem­bers re­tired Judges Humphrey Stollmey­er and Roger Hamel-Smith re­sign cit­ing per­son­al rea­sons, in­clud­ing trau­ma to their fam­i­lies from un­due crit­i­cism over their work.

Sep­tem­ber 1, 2017—The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al files in­ter­pre­ta­tion sum­mons to de­cide the pol­i­cy for restart­ing cas­es af­ter a mag­is­trate sud­den­ly demits of­fice.

May 26, 2018—Two Sea Lots men whose case was af­fect­ed by the Ay­ers-Cae­sar fi­as­co are freed of the 2012 mur­der of three fish­er­men af­ter they agree to have it restart­ed be­fore Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle. Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle up­holds their no case sub­mis­sion over in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence in the case against them.

Jan­u­ary 4, 2019—High Court Judge Car­ol Gob­in rules that there is no op­tion but to con­tin­ue the cas­es be­fore a new mag­is­trate. Gob­in ruled that all cas­es had to be restart­ed. Most of the ac­cused in the 53 cas­es, who agreed to restart their case, have had their cas­es de­ter­mined.


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