Gaston Browne hits back at women judges: ‘Where were you?’

An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne has in­ten­si­fied his clash with the re­gion­al ju­di­cia­ry, ques­tion­ing where as­so­ci­a­tions rep­re­sent­ing women judges were when vul­ner­a­ble girls were be­ing raped and sex­u­al of­fend­ers were re­ceiv­ing what he de­scribed as le­nient prison sen­tences.

Browne’s lat­est com­ments fol­low a joint re­buke from five re­gion­al as­so­ci­a­tions rep­re­sent­ing women judges, which ex­pressed “grave con­cern” over his con­tro­ver­sial threat to de­port a sit­ting judge over sen­tenc­ing de­ci­sions.

In a so­cial me­dia post, Browne shared a graph­ic ask­ing: “Where were the con­cerns and re­bukes of these re­gion­al women judges against the in­jus­tices, when lit­tle vul­ner­a­ble girls were be­ing raped and the sex­u­al preda­tors, pe­dophiles were giv­en less than five years in prison? Where were you?”

He al­so shared a lengthy state­ment, at­trib­uted to an un­known au­thor, which warned of an “un­chal­lenged rogue ju­di­cia­ry” and ac­cused judges of en­gag­ing in ju­di­cial ac­tivism.

“Wok­e­ness has tak­en over our civ­i­liza­tion!!” the state­ment said, ar­gu­ing that judges were dis­re­gard­ing leg­isla­tive guide­lines and im­pos­ing sen­tences “in line with their lib­er­al or­tho­doxy.”

It con­tend­ed that the three branch­es of gov­ern­ment, the ex­ec­u­tive, leg­is­la­ture and ju­di­cia­ry, must be able to hold each oth­er ac­count­able and ar­gued that mech­a­nisms should ex­ist out­side of the ju­di­cia­ry to ad­dress what it de­scribed as “rogue and ac­tivist judges.”

Browne added his own com­ment that the three branch­es “must hold each oth­er ac­count­able, to en­sure re­spon­si­ble gov­er­nance.”

The es­ca­lat­ing dis­pute be­gan af­ter Browne crit­i­cised what he con­sid­ered in­ad­e­quate sen­tences for se­ri­ous crimes dur­ing a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty meet­ing on Au­gust 10.

Ad­dress­ing an un­named judge, Browne warned that if the ju­di­cial of­fi­cer could not fol­low Par­lia­ment’s lead in im­pos­ing longer sen­tences, the judge should leave An­tigua and Bar­bu­da vol­un­tar­i­ly or face de­por­ta­tion and des­ig­na­tion as per­sona non gra­ta.

The An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Bar As­so­ci­a­tion sub­se­quent­ly de­scribed the re­marks as a grave threat to ju­di­cial in­de­pen­dence and called on Browne to with­draw them and af­firm that ex­ec­u­tive pow­ers would not be used to in­flu­ence or pun­ish ju­di­cial of­fi­cers.

Browne re­ject­ed that de­mand, telling the as­so­ci­a­tion in a Face­book post: “Here is my re­sponse to your re­quest for an apol­o­gy:Piss off.”

The con­tro­ver­sy then widened re­gion­al­ly, with the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Women Judges, Com­mon­wealth of The Ba­hamas As­so­ci­a­tion of Women Judges, East­ern Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Women Judges, Guyana As­so­ci­a­tion of Women Judges and Trinidad and To­ba­go As­so­ci­a­tion of Women Judges is­su­ing a joint state­ment.

They ar­gued that threat­en­ing a judge with de­por­ta­tion over sen­tenc­ing could not be char­ac­terised sim­ply as ro­bust crit­i­cism and stressed that judges must de­cide cas­es ac­cord­ing to the Con­sti­tu­tion, law, ev­i­dence, sen­tenc­ing guide­lines and bind­ing ap­pel­late au­thor­i­ty.

Browne has main­tained that ju­di­cial in­de­pen­dence is es­sen­tial but does not place judges or their de­ci­sions be­yond pub­lic crit­i­cism. He pre­vi­ous­ly said his con­cerns were prompt­ed by com­plaints from law en­force­ment of­fi­cials and cit­i­zens about sen­tences in firearm and statu­to­ry rape cas­es, in­sist­ing that as Prime Min­is­ter he has a du­ty to safe­guard the pub­lic.