LATT concerned about attacks against judges following Hadeed ruling

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­[email protected]

The Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (LATT) has ex­pressed con­cern over per­son­al at­tacks against Court of Ap­peal judges, fol­low­ing their rul­ing in the Hadeed case. It says while ro­bust pub­lic de­bate of ju­di­cial de­ci­sions is le­git­i­mate in a democ­ra­cy, crit­i­cism must re­main re­spect­ful and not de­scend in­to un­found­ed al­le­ga­tions that im­pugn the in­tegri­ty or in­de­pen­dence of the Ju­di­cia­ry.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, LATT ex­plained that the Court of Ap­peal’s rul­ing dealt with an in­ter­locu­to­ry ap­pli­ca­tion and did not nec­es­sar­i­ly de­ter­mine the ul­ti­mate le­gal­i­ty of the de­ten­tion or con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the Emer­gency Pow­ers regime. Those sub­stan­tive ques­tions, LATT said, re­main be­fore the courts.

“The very fact that these is­sues are present­ly be­fore the courts demon­strates that the con­sti­tu­tion­al safe­guards es­tab­lished by the Con­sti­tu­tion re­main op­er­a­tional dur­ing a State of Emer­gency. Ques­tions con­cern­ing the le­gal­i­ty of de­ten­tion and the scope of emer­gency pow­ers are mat­ters which our courts are con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly en­trust­ed to de­ter­mine,” LATT said.

Busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve have been de­tained un­der Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders for near­ly a month, af­ter be­ing ac­cused of plot­ting to as­sas­si­nate se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials. Af­ter los­ing their chal­lenge against their de­ten­tion in the High Court, the Court of Ap­peal last Thurs­day (Ju­ly 16) or­dered their con­di­tion­al re­lease un­der house ar­rest, but a sep­a­rate pan­el lat­er grant­ed the State an ur­gent stay, keep­ing them in cus­tody un­til the Privy Coun­cil hears that ap­peal.

LATT em­pha­sised that while dis­ap­point­ment with court de­ci­sions is nat­ur­al, crit­i­cism should be in­formed and re­spect­ful.

“Mem­bers of the pub­lic are en­cour­aged to en­gage with the out­come of ju­di­cial de­ci­sions; how­ev­er, com­men­tary which at­tacks the in­tegri­ty of the court, or which is made with­out re­gard to the le­gal and ev­i­den­tial ba­sis for a de­ci­sion, risks un­der­min­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice.”

The as­so­ci­a­tion reaf­firmed its con­fi­dence in the in­de­pen­dence and im­par­tial­i­ty of the Ju­di­cia­ry and the ju­di­cial process es­tab­lished by the Con­sti­tu­tion. It not­ed that the writ­ten rea­sons for the rul­ing have not yet been giv­en but will even­tu­al­ly ex­plain the le­gal prin­ci­ples ap­plied and as­sist prac­ti­tion­ers, lit­i­gants and mem­bers of the pub­lic in un­der­stand­ing the ba­sis of the de­ci­sion.

LATT al­so urged its mem­bers to ad­vise clients to ex­er­cise their right to com­ment re­spect­ful­ly and re­frain from at­tack­ing the in­tegri­ty of the court, or mak­ing state­ments that un­der­mine pub­lic con­fi­dence in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice.

Echo­ing sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments yes­ter­day, As­sem­bly of South­ern Lawyers pres­i­dent Saira Lakhan said al­le­ga­tions seek­ing to un­der­mine the in­tegri­ty, im­par­tial­i­ty, or in­de­pen­dence of judges with­out any ev­i­den­tial ba­sis risk weak­en­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence in the Ju­di­cia­ry.

“Re­cent com­men­tary across so­cial me­dia has re­flect­ed strong pub­lic dis­sat­is­fac­tion with as­pects of the pro­ceed­ings and the han­dling of the lit­i­ga­tion. While mem­bers of the pub­lic are en­ti­tled to ques­tion pro­ce­dur­al de­ci­sions and to de­bate their con­sti­tu­tion­al im­pli­ca­tions, pub­lic con­fi­dence in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice is not strength­ened by per­son­al at­tacks or al­le­ga­tions of im­pro­pri­ety that are un­sup­port­ed by ev­i­dence,” Lakhan said.

Join­ing LATT in urg­ing that pub­lic dis­cus­sion re­main re­spect­ful, in­formed and fo­cused on the le­gal is­sues rather than un­found­ed at­tacks against ju­di­cial of­fi­cers or the Ju­di­cia­ry, Lakhan said: “Re­spect for the rule of law re­quires that dis­agree­ments with ju­di­cial de­ci­sions be ex­pressed re­spon­si­bly and that con­fi­dence in our con­sti­tu­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions be pre­served.”

Mean­while, Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Is­rael Khan SC said free­dom of ex­pres­sion and free­dom of the press are en­shrined rights in the Con­sti­tu­tion, but there must be a bal­anc­ing act.

“When the mat­ter is sub ju­dice, that is still be­fore the courts, cit­i­zens must re­frain from mak­ing pub­lic com­ments that could dam­age the in­de­pen­dence of the Ju­di­cia­ry or cast as­per­sions on the Ju­di­cia­ry. So, it’s a bal­ance that we have to en­gage in.”

Khan cau­tioned that in­di­vid­u­als who com­ment ad­verse­ly could al­so find them­selves in le­gal prob­lems.

“So, the peo­ple who are com­ment­ing ad­verse­ly and so on, on­ly if they cas­ti­gate un­fair­ness or im­par­tial­i­ty to the court, they could be cit­ed for con­tempt of court.”

He added, “But, nonethe­less, gen­er­al­ly, I agree with the Law As­so­ci­a­tion that cit­i­zens must be cau­tious and the press must be cau­tious and in­di­vid­u­als must be cau­tious.”