Gov’t welcomes new plea agreement policy to ease court backlog

The Gov­ern­ment has wel­comed the launch of the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Pol­i­cy on Plea Dis­cus­sions and Plea Agree­ments, de­scrib­ing it as an im­por­tant step to­wards strength­en­ing the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and re­duc­ing the back­log of crim­i­nal cas­es.

The pol­i­cy, ac­com­pa­nied by Stan­dard Op­er­at­ing Pro­ce­dures (SOPs), was of­fi­cial­ly launched at a train­ing work­shop at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre on Tues­day.

Min­is­ter of Jus­tice and Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al De­vesh Ma­haraj de­liv­ered re­marks on be­half of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, SC, at the event, which was held in part­ner­ship with the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP) and fund­ed by the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU).

The work­shop, or­gan­ised un­der the Part­ner­ship of the Caribbean and Eu­ro­pean Union on Jus­tice (PACE Jus­tice) Project, is in­tend­ed to strength­en pros­e­cu­tors’ abil­i­ty to ap­ply plea dis­cus­sions and agree­ments con­sis­tent­ly and ap­pro­pri­ate­ly.

Ma­haraj not­ed that plea agree­ments are gov­erned by the Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure (Plea Dis­cus­sion and Plea Agree­ment) Act, 2017, which pro­vides the le­gal frame­work for pros­e­cu­tors and ac­cused per­sons to ne­go­ti­ate agree­ments.

He said the new DPP pol­i­cy of­fers ad­di­tion­al guid­ance, en­cour­ag­ing pros­e­cu­tors to con­sid­er plea dis­cus­sions af­ter thor­ough­ly as­sess­ing cas­es and de­ter­min­ing whether an agree­ment is an ap­pro­pri­ate way to re­solve a mat­ter.

"Jus­tice, not con­vic­tion, ex­pe­di­en­cy or com­pro­mise, is the ob­jec­tive of every plea agree­ment," Ma­haraj said, stress­ing that the process must up­hold fair­ness and due process.

The launch was at­tend­ed by Chief Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh, Eu­ro­pean Union Am­bas­sador Cé­cile Tassin, UNDP Res­i­dent Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ugo Blan­co and Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard, SC, along with pros­e­cu­tors and oth­er of­fi­cials.

The ini­tia­tive forms part of broad­er ef­forts to im­prove the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice, with the pol­i­cy in­tend­ed to pro­vide pros­e­cu­tors with a con­sis­tent frame­work for con­sid­er­ing plea agree­ments.