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Friday, July 11, 2025

UNC lawyer: Subjudice don’t apply in Nelson case

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984 days ago
20221031
Vincent Nelson

Vincent Nelson

Rishard Khan

The calls for clar­i­ty in the Vin­cent Nel­son in­dem­ni­ty fi­as­co con­tin­ue to grow, but so too does At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour’s si­lence, cit­ing the con­cept of “sub­ju­dice” as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion.

How­ev­er, promi­nent at­tor­ney, Kiel Tak­lals­ingh, yes­ter­day ex­plained that this rule does not arise in civ­il mat­ters such as the one cur­rent­ly be­fore the court for the state’s al­leged breach of said agree­ment.

“I re­al­ly, with the great­est of re­spect to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, or to any­body, I don’t see how the sub ju­dice rule ap­plies. That is a mis­un­der­stand­ing and mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the sub ju­dice rule,” he said speak­ing dur­ing an Op­po­si­tion press con­fer­ence on Sun­day.

Tak­lals­ingh ex­plained that the rule of sub ju­dice main­ly ap­plies in mat­ters go­ing be­fore a ju­ry.

“Sub­ju­dice is de­signed to treat with cer­tain as­pects of the jus­tice sys­tem. Peo­ple have the mis­con­cep­tion that be­cause a mat­ter is in court, you can’t speak about it. That is wrong. Sub ju­dice was orig­i­nal­ly de­signed to pro­tect ju­ries. So if there was a mur­der case and if every­body’s com­ment­ing on the sala­cious­ness of it, you don’t want that com­men­tary af­fect­ing a layper­son who is a ju­ror and that is where the sub ju­dice rule has come out. It has noth­ing to do with these civ­il pro­ceed­ings,” he said.

He quot­ed Mar­tin Daly, SC, ex­plain­ing that any prej­u­di­cial state­ments in civ­il pro­ceed­ings will be com­bat­ed by rea­son of their pro­fes­sion­al train­ing and ex­pe­ri­ence.

“What he is say­ing there is a judge is not an or­di­nary ju­ror. A judge is trained. He in­su­lates his mind. He knows how to ex­cul­pate and ex­clude things from his mind that may in­flu­ence him,” he said.

“The mat­ter is not sub ju­dice.”

Tak­lals­ingh said he is not the on­ly en­ti­ty with­in the le­gal pro­fes­sion that is mak­ing the as­ser­tion.

“It is not on­ly me say­ing it. Mar­tin Daly has said it. The Law As­so­ci­a­tion has called up­on him (the AG) to an­swer—you think if the Law As­so­ci­a­tion felt it was sub ju­dice that the Law As­so­ci­a­tion would call up­on him to an­swer? The South­ern Law As­so­ci­a­tion has called him to an­swer. The Crim­i­nal Bar to­day- and it is the crim­i­nal prac­ti­tion­ers who know bet­ter than any­one else about sub ju­dice rules be­cause sub ju­dice was de­signed to pro­tect ju­ries- so if any­body would think that this was sub ju­dice, it would be the Crim­i­nal Bar and they have al­so called for an ex­pla­na­tion,” he said.


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