JLSC drops probe against Ayers-Caesar

The Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (JLSC) says it will take no fur­ther steps in re­la­tion to a com­plaint made against for­mer chief mag­is­trate and cur­rent High Court Judge Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar.

The de­ci­sion was an­nounced yes­ter­day in a brief press re­lease is­sued by the Ser­vice Com­mis­sions De­part­ment.

It said, “The Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, af­ter re­ceiv­ing le­gal ad­vice and care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion, has de­cid­ed to not pur­sue any fur­ther steps re­gard­ing Madam Jus­tice Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar.”

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the re­lease was in re­la­tion to a com­plaint al­leg­ing that Ay­ers-Cae­sar mis­led the JLSC on pend­ing cas­es she left un­fin­ished when she sought to take a pro­mo­tion in 2017.

The com­plaint was re­port­ed­ly left pend­ing as Ay­ers-Cae­sar suc­cess­ful­ly pur­sued lit­i­ga­tion over be­ing pres­sured to re­sign by for­mer JLSC chair­man and chief jus­tice Ivor Archie and then-mem­bers of the JLSC.

In April 2017, Ay­ers-Cae­sar was ap­point­ed a High Court Judge. Two weeks lat­er, she re­signed from the post amid pub­lic crit­i­cism over al­most 50 cas­es she had left un­fin­ished when she took up the pro­mo­tion.

Ay­ers-Cae­sar then filed the law­suit in which she claimed she was pres­sured by Archie and the JLSC in­to re­sign­ing un­der the threat that her ap­point­ment would be re­voked.

Archie and the JLSC de­nied any wrong­do­ing and claimed that Ay­ers-Cae­sar’s fail­ure to dis­close the full ex­tent of her un­fin­ished case­load was suf­fi­cient­ly se­ri­ous to war­rant a dis­ci­pli­nary in­quiry.

Archie had claimed that he had sug­gest­ed she re­sign and re­turn as a mag­is­trate to com­plete the cas­es but main­tained he did not pres­sure or threat­en her. He al­so claimed nei­ther he nor the JLSC had the pow­er to take the ac­tion at­trib­uted to them by Ay­ers-Cae­sar. They con­tend­ed that Ay­ers-Cae­sar ac­cept­ed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and freely ten­dered her res­ig­na­tion with the in­ten­tion, at that time, to re­turn as a mag­is­trate to com­plete the part-heard cas­es.

Ay­ers-Cae­sar’s law­suit was even­tu­al­ly dis­missed by High Court Judge David Har­ris lead­ing to the chal­lenge be­fore the Court of Ap­peal.

Ap­pel­late Judges Al­lan Men­don­ca, Nolan Bereaux, and Al­ice Yorke-Soo Hon all wrote sep­a­rate but con­sis­tent judg­ments in which they crit­i­cised the JLSC, which was chaired by Archie, for im­prop­er­ly and il­le­gal­ly pres­sur­ing Ay­ers-Cae­sar to re­sign.

In late March, last year, the Privy Coun­cil, led by UK Supreme Court Pres­i­dent Lord Robert Reed, agreed with the lo­cal Ap­peal Court that Ay­ers-Cae­sar was im­prop­er­ly forced to re­sign. How­ev­er, the British Law Lords ruled that she could have been prop­er­ly sub­ject­ed to a probe un­der Sec­tion 137 of the Con­sti­tu­tion.

Un­der this seg­ment of the Con­sti­tu­tion, judges can on­ly be re­moved for mis­be­hav­iour or their in­abil­i­ty to per­form the func­tions of the of­fice due to in­fir­mi­ty of the mind or body.

In such in­stances, a tri­bunal is ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent on the ad­vice of the Prime Min­is­ter in the case of the Chief Jus­tice and the JLSC for judges. The tri­bunal in­ves­ti­gates and then rec­om­mends whether the Privy Coun­cil should con­sid­er if the judge should be re­moved.

Ay­ers-Cae­sar was al­lowed to re­sume as a judge fol­low­ing the fi­nal ap­peal.—Derek Achong

In Oc­to­ber, last year, Archie re­tired and Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh was ap­point­ed to suc­ceed him. Boodoos­ingh cur­rent­ly chairs the JLSC as part of his role as Chief Jus­tice.