TT Law Association condemns regional governments

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Apr 19, CMC – The Law Association of Trinidad and Tobago (LATT) has expressed its disapproval at what it said had been “the recent attempts by regional political leaders to ridicule judges for their decisions to grant bail to persons charged with murder”.

LATT also criticised the politicians for what it said their suggestion that the judges “tend to favour the clients of certain unidentified lawyers”.

St Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves, addressing the two-day regional symposium on violence as a public health issue, which ended here on Tuesday and attended by several Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders, criticised members of the judiciary who granted bail to murder accused, asking whether they lived on Mars.

“I am not calling for any totalitarian measure. I am not calling for that. But there is in aspects of our judiciary  a creeping lack of awareness as to some of the problems which we face.

“How can you give somebody who is charged for murder bail? Let’s be serious. How can you do that,” Gonsalves asked, adding “where those judges live, on Mars.

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, who is also an attorney, told the regional symposium that many years ago “people did not get bail for murder.

“Now when I look at the stats, not just out of the Bahamas, Barbados and all through the region, the people who are causing the greatest problems are charged with two, three, four murders. Something is fundamentally wrong.

“So I ask myself two basic questions. How are we going to deconstruct and reconstruct to meet the reality of this jurisprudential development that is undermining the rule of law in our countries and we are going to have to find ways of cooperating from the level of the police to the level of the courts, but in particular, forensics.

“If we can get people to court within nine to 12 months, you have a good chance of a person not being given bail. Beyond 12 months, any number can start to play,” Mottley said.

Gonsalves, a Roman Catholic, who said both his  mother and the Pope were wrong in denouncing the use of the death penalty as a deterrent to murder, insisted that it should be used for murder.

“If we have that as a particular option in the punishment schedule for the courts not to make it very well near impossible to carry out the death penalty. What I am talking here people in the taverns across Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados and so on are talking these things”.

Gonsalves also noted that “too many of our judges and our magistrates are too soft. Sometimes you get the impression that some magistrates, depending on who is he lawyer, their people seem to get a better treatment …every body talks about this you, but they talking about it behind closed doors,” said Gonsalves, who is also a lawyer.

“You don’t hear it from a prime minister. Well let us begin to talk about these things too. All if these matters touch and concern how we are going to address this question(of crime and violence,), “ he added.

But in a lengthy statement, LATT said any person who is arrested and charged with a  criminal offence is not presumed to be guilty of the offence.

“He or she is only guilty when a magistrate or a jury returns a guilty verdict after a trial at which the prosecution and defence present their evidence and their arguments on the law,” LATT said, noting that the Trinidad and Tobago Constitution enshrines the right of a person charged with a criminal offence to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

“This is not a lawyer’s pious incantation of some technicality aimed at thwarting the ends of justice. It is an integral part of the justice system itself which affords protection to all persons if they are charged with a criminal offence.”

LATT said that the criminal justice landscape is littered with cases in which the prosecution has failed to prove their case and a not-guilty verdict is returned, or in which the Director of Public Prosecutions determines for one reason or the other to discontinue a charge.

“Persons charged with an offence who are denied bail, always run the risk of being deprived of their liberty for the increasingly long periods it takes for a case to come to trial and then to be exonerated at the conclusion of the trial process. This is why the Constitution also guarantees the right not to be denied reasonable bail without just cause.”

LATT said that the way the right is expressed implicitly involves an acceptance that bail can be denied, for just cause.

“Just cause is established where there is evidence that the accused may not turn up for trial if released on bail, may interfere with witnesses or may commit other offences while out on bail. “It falls to the judiciary in every case to balance, on the one hand, the public interest in safety and protection from the criminal element, and on the other, the accused’s right to liberty and to not be presumed to be guilty simply because a charge is laid against him or her. It is a difficult balancing act to perform.”

The LATT said that judges and magistrates have the “unenviable task, each time a person is charged with an offence, and bail must be considered, of weighing that person’s right to liberty against the public interest.

“Judges cannot simply decide not to grant bail altogether. No doubt, there would be occasions where persons released on bail have gone on to engage in criminal activity. But that is no reason to castigate judges and magistrates for doing the job the Constitution requires them to do and for upholding the sacred constitutional rights to which we are all entitled.”

It said that while it is the responsibility of stakeholders to work towards mechanisms to deal with the surge in criminal activity in the region “it is to be expected that judges and magistrates will be sensitive to what is happening in the wider society.

“But it is counter-productive to wantonly castigate those sworn to protect and uphold hard-won and cherished rights in the pursuit of these solutions. It is even more irresponsible on the part of our regional leaders to sow public discord about the difficult decisions which judges and magistrates are entrusted to make and to do so without even taking the time to examine the particular facts of the cases with which they seem to have taken issue.

“Can it reasonably be suggested that a judge or magistrate who releases a person on bail, particularly where that person has been awaiting trial for upwards of ten years, with no prospect of a trial within a reasonable time, is a judge or magistrate who lives on Mars?”

LATT said there is no doubt that the judiciary must remain open to constructive criticism “but random and unreasoned ridicule will serve only to undermine confidence in the very judiciary upon whom we all depend, our regional leaders included, for the due and timely delivery of justice”.

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