Is­rael B Ra­jah-Khan SC, LLD

Pres­i­dent, Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion

The re­cent judg­ment by the Court of Ap­peal, head­ed by Chief Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoosigh, stay­ing the re­lease of the Hadeeds from prison pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the mat­ter be­fore the Privy Coun­cil, has gen­er­at­ed much neg­a­tive com­ments against the CJ and the pan­el of judges on so­cial me­dia that both the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (LATT) and the As­sem­bly of South­ern Lawyers (ASL) found it nec­es­sary to cau­tion the pub­lic in mak­ing un­war­rant­ed crit­i­cism about the Ju­di­cia­ry. 

The un­war­rant­ed crit­i­cism is not new to us. Way back in 1992, I had cause to write a com­men­tary on the is­sue of at­tack­ing the Ju­di­cia­ry on the grounds of race.

Hec­tor Mc Clean, an at­tor­ney and ex-cab­i­net min­is­ter in the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment gov­ern­ment, in his Sun­day Guardian col­umn of May 31, 1992, un­der the bold head­ing “In­con­sis­ten­cy in Sen­tenc­ing,” had stat­ed that the “sen­tenc­ing pol­i­cy of our crim­i­nal courts” was dis­crim­i­nat­ing against crim­i­nal­ly guilty per­sons on the grounds of race, in that some mag­is­trates and judges were hand­ing out le­nient sen­tences to In­di­ans whilst there were se­vere sen­tences on Africans for com­pa­ra­ble crimes in sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances and this could have led to de­struc­tive risks and may­hem in T&T. 

My com­men­tary is doc­u­ment­ed in my book Scales of Jus­tice. I stat­ed: “Mr Mc Clean’s di­a­tribe is not on­ly in­sult­ing to the mag­is­trates and judges in the Re­pub­lic of T&T but it smacks of con­tempt and I humbly sug­gest to him that he im­me­di­ate­ly make a re­trac­tion of his racial al­le­ga­tions and of­fer an apol­o­gy to the Ju­di­cia­ry or leave him­self open to con­tempt pro­ceed­ings for im­port­ing im­prop­er mo­tives to the mag­is­trates and judges of the land in per­form­ing their du­ties.” 

I quot­ed a case which was de­cid­ed by the Privy Coun­cil from our ju­ris­dic­tion; Am­bard VAG PC 1936 ALL ER p 7044. It stat­ed the fol­low­ing: 

“It is the or­di­nary right of mem­bers of the pub­lic or the press to crit­i­cise in good faith, in pri­vate or pub­lic, the pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice, pro­vid­ed that they ab­stain from im­put­ing im­prop­er mo­tives to those tak­ing part in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice.” 

The judg­ment warned that those who are con­vict­ed of con­tempt of court could be sen­tenced to a term of im­pris­on­ment. 

 I thus take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to warn the pub­lic to be cir­cum­spect in the crit­i­cism of the Ju­di­cia­ry in their un­war­rant­ed at­tack up­on our judges in re­la­tion to its judg­ment. 

Our Con­sti­tu­tion guar­an­tees cit­i­zens the right to free­dom of ex­pres­sion but they can­not use this right as a sub­terfuge to ac­cuse the Ju­di­cia­ry of be­ing bi­ased on the grounds of race, class, creed, colour, gen­der or po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion. 

And I here­by adopt the com­ments of the ASL which, in a me­dia re­lease, stat­ed: 

“Al­le­ga­tions that seek to un­der­mine the in­tegri­ty, im­par­tial­i­ty, or in­de­pen­dence of the judges with­out any ev­i­den­tial ba­sis risk weak­en­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence in one of the na­tion’s most im­por­tant con­sti­tu­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions.” 

The LATT me­dia re­lease al­so as­sert­ed that: “per­son­al at­tacks on judges and com­men­tary which at­tack the in­tegri­ty of the court risks un­der­min­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice.” 

My per­son­al opin­ion on the judges who or­dered the re­lease of the Hadeeds from prison was pub­lished in the T&T Guardian.

It stat­ed: Hav­ing pe­rused the Court of Ap­peal judg­ment of the Hadeeds’ mat­ter, I have re­luc­tant­ly but firm­ly ar­rived at the con­clu­sion that our es­teemed judges were patent­ly wrong in grant­i­ng them in­ter­im non-cus­to­di­al re­liefs pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders im­posed up­on them by the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der. 

 As an aside, I now wish to add that it is al­so my con­sid­ered opin­ion that the Privy Coun­cil, more like­ly than not, would rule that it is the sole dis­cre­tion of the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, in his own per­son­al judge­ment, to is­sue a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der up­on any cit­i­zen if he is sim­ply sat­is­fied that it is nec­es­sary to pre­vent the par­tic­u­lar per­son from act­ing in any man­ner prej­u­di­cial to the pub­lic safe­ty or pub­lic or­der dur­ing a State of Emer­gency. 

Ed­i­tor’s Note: Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der yes­ter­day or­dered the re­lease of busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve from cus­tody un­der Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders.