In­dar­jit Seu­raj

The 2010/2011 law term, which opens to­day , promis­es to be ex­plo­sive, with the "high-pro­file" tri­als in­to the mur­ders of busi­ness­woman Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man and busi­ness­man Dr Ed­die Koury ex­pect­ed to start.

In the case of the 12 men charged with Naipaul-Cool­man's mur­der, the tri­al is ex­pect­ed to set the record for the longest crim­i­nal tri­al in the na­tion's his­to­ry.It is al­so ex­pect­ed to see the in­tro­duc­tion of DNA ev­i­dence be­ing put to a ju­ry for the first time.

The Xtra Foods CEO was kid­napped on De­cem­ber 19, 2006, from her home at Radix Road, Lange Park, Ch­agua­nas.Her body has nev­er been found, but she has been de­clared dead by Homi­cide Bu­reau in­ves­ti­ga­tors.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the head of de­cap­i­tat­ed busi­ness­man Dr Koury, 38, has nev­er been found.

The tri­al against four men charged with kid­nap­ping and killing Koury will al­so be heard in the new law term.To­day's open­ing will fol­low the cus­tom­ary church ser­vice at the Cathe­dral of the Im­mac­u­late Con­cep­tion on Hart Street, Port-of-Spain.

And af­ter the pro­ces­sion along Aber­crom­by Street to the Hall of Jus­tice, Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie will de­liv­er his ad­dress in the Con­vo­ca­tion Hall of the court, to mem­bers of the ju­di­cia­ry, mag­is­tra­cy and le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty, be­fore for­mal­ly open­ing the new law term.

In his ad­dress at the start of the 2009/2010 law term, Archie was crit­i­cal on the lim­it­ed fund­ing al­lo­cat­ed to the ju­di­cia­ry in the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion days ear­li­er.The ju­di­cia­ry had re­quest­ed $393 mil­lion for the de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme for 2009/2010, which in­clud­ed a new Fam­i­ly Court.In­stead, the ju­di­cia­ry was al­lo­cat­ed a mea­gre $42.5 mil­lion.

This year, the ju­di­cia­ry would be with­out for­mer judge-turned-politi­cian Her­bert Vol­ney, who re­signed ear­li­er in the year to con­test the gen­er­al elec­tion.Iron­i­cal­ly, Vol­ney now heads the Min­istry of Jus­tice, the of­fice which will over­see cer­tain as­pects of the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice.

The ju­di­cia­ry now has three va­can­cies to fill with his de­par­ture, as well as the de­par­ture of tem­po­rary judges Gillian Lucky and Ra­jiv Per­sad.The tem­po­rary ap­point­ments of the lat­ter two will ex­pire at the end of Sep­tem­ber.

Sources in the ju­di­cia­ry re­vealed that they have not ap­plied to fill the va­can­cies for the per­ma­nent po­si­tions.The ju­di­cia­ry was yet to ap­point at­tor­neys to fill these va­can­cies, but Guardian un­der­stands that As­sis­tant Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Wayne Ra­jbansee, who re­signed from of­fice at the start of Sep­tem­ber, and de­fence at­tor­ney Ricky Rahim were in­ter­viewed for the jobs.

One new face which will join the mag­is­tra­cy for to­day's open­ing is Re­han­na Ho­sein.Ho­sein, who worked in the of­fice of the Chief State So­lic­i­tor in the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, was ap­point­ed to the mag­is­tra­cy in Au­gust.

Traf­fic re­stric­tions

The fol­low­ing streets will be closed to­day be­tween 6 am and 1 pm to ac­com­mo­date the open­ing of the law term:

n St Vin­cent Street, be­tween Duke Street and Queen Street;

n Hart Street;

n Knox Street; and

n Aber­crom­by Street, be­tween In­de­pen­dence Square and Park Street.

Al­so, park­ing would be tem­porar­i­ly re­strict­ed be­tween 6 am and 2 pm on the fol­low­ing streets:

n Aber­crom­by Street;

n Ed­ward Street;

n Duke Street;

n Pem­broke Street;

n Hen­ry Street, be­tween In­de­pen­dence Square and Park Street; and

n Queen Street.