Dar­ren Ba­haw

Death row in­mate Lester Pit­man, who trig­gered a mael­strom of crit­i­cism against Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie and oth­er mem­bers of the ju­di­cia­ry over de­lays in the de­liv­ery of judg­ments, was yes­ter­day or­dered to serve a min­i­mum of 40 years be­hind bars for the bru­tal killings of three peo­ple more than a decade ago.Iron­i­cal­ly, Pit­man, 34, who has been be­hind bars since 2001 for the Cas­cade triple mur­ders, was late to the Court of Ap­peal at the Hall of Jus­tice, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, lead­ing to a 22-minute de­lay.

Sen­si­tive to the re­cent is­sues raised, Archie was quick to alert the court­room: "The pris­on­ers have not yet ar­rived, the de­lay is not our mak­ing."Wear­ing a sky-blue shirt and grey pleat­ed trousers, and chew­ing gum in­ces­sant­ly, Pit­man even­tu­al­ly saun­tered in­to the court­room, the tail of his shirt out­side his pants, tak­ing a seat in the pris­on­er's dock. Apart from the ten burly pris­ons of­fi­cers seat­ed to his right, there were four uni­formed Court and Process Branch of­fi­cers stand­ing guard.

Archie, who presided over the ap­peal with Jus­tices of Ap­peal Paula Mae Weekes and Al­ice Yorke-Soo Hon, an­nounced that the pan­el had dis­missed Pit­man's ap­peal against his con­vic­tion on three counts of mur­der.

Hav­ing re­gard to the fact that Pit­man, who was con­vict­ed in 2004, had been in cus­tody more than five years af­ter his con­vic­tion and tak­ing in­to ac­count the guide­lines of the Privy Coun­cil in the land­mark case of Pratt and Mor­gan, which pro­hibits the State from car­ry­ing out an ex­e­cu­tion af­ter five years, ex­cept in ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances, Archie "com­mut­ed" Pit­man's death sen­tence to one of life im­pris­on­ment and or­dered that the pris­on­er not be re­leased be­fore he serves a min­i­mum of 40 years be­hind bars.

The cir­cum­stances of the case, ac­cord­ing to Archie, in­volved a home in­va­sion where the vic­tims were hog-tied and killed and he ob­served that Pit­man had shown no re­morse for his acts.Le­gal ob­servers said yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, that the Chief Jus­tice had no pow­er to com­mute Pit­man's sen­tence, since such pow­er on­ly re­sides in the hands of the Pres­i­dent. Rather, they said the CJ could have sub­sti­tut­ed his sen­tence of death to one of life im­pris­on­ment.

Archie spent a con­sid­er­able time af­ter giv­ing the court's de­ci­sion de­fend­ing the ju­di­cia­ry against crit­i­cism in the me­dia about the de­lay in de­liv­er­ing judg­ments, say­ing that this case was the ex­cep­tion rather than the rule in most mat­ters. He re­peat­ed sta­tis­tics pub­lished in a full-page ad­ver­tise­ment last Sun­day and not­ed that it was the in­ten­tion of judges to give writ­ten de­ci­sions with­in six months of hear­ing a case.In Pit­man's case, the Ap­peal Court, had re­served its de­ci­sion in March 2010.

In Oc­to­ber, Se­nior Coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal, who rep­re­sent­ed the State, had writ­ten to the Chief Jus­tice, seek­ing an­swers on when the judg­ment in Pit­man's mat­ter, and two oth­er mur­der ap­peals, would be de­liv­ered. In her let­ter, See­ta­hal re­ferred to the scathing re­marks made by the Privy Coun­cil in Ju­ly, about the four-year de­lay by a Fam­i­ly Court judge in hand­ing down a rul­ing, which was de­scribed as "an af­front to fam­i­ly jus­tice."

Archie, in re­sponse to Seethal's let­ter, promised to de­liv­er the rul­ing be­fore the end of De­cem­ber.On No­vem­ber 25, Pit­man, through his civ­il lawyers, took the un­prece­dent­ed move of fil­ing a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter against the Chief Jus­tice, claim­ing that his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights were be­ing in­fringed by the de­lay in the de­liv­ery of his judg­ment. A sec­ond let­ter fol­lowed, which threat­ened to re­move the Chief Jus­tice from of­fice on the ba­sis of ju­di­cial mis­con­duct.

Chief State So­lic­i­tor Christophe Grant, in re­sponse to the No­vem­ber 25 let­ter, stat­ed on De­cem­ber 6 that three at­tor­neys had been ap­point­ed to treat with the con­cerns raised in Pit­man's let­ter.The crit­i­cism, which threat­ened to erode the pub­lic's con­fi­dence in the ju­di­cia­ry, prompt­ed Archie to sum­mon the 40 Supreme Court judges and three mas­ters of the High Court to a meet­ing on De­cem­ber 9 at the Hall of Jus­tice.

At that meet­ing, Archie spoke of a con­spir­a­cy to get him out of of­fice and not­ed that he was aware that peo­ple "were cau­cus­ing on the week­ends," with­out nam­ing his con­spir­a­tors. Ju­di­cia­ry sources not­ed that Archie was like­ly re­fer­ring to fel­low judges who have been crit­i­cal of him and oth­er judges for fail­ing to de­liv­er judg­ments in a time­ly man­ner.

A state­ment is­sued by the ju­di­cia­ry, four days af­ter the meet­ing, set out laud­able bench­marks for the de­liv­ery of judg­ments in the new year–those more than a year old to be de­liv­ered by March 31 and Ju­ly 30, while those out­stand­ing for more than six months will be de­liv­ered.

Pit­man's case his­to­ry

Lester Pit­man was charged in 2001 and con­vict­ed in 2004 of the Cas­cade triple mur­ders.John Crop­per, 59; his moth­er-in-law Mag­gie Lee 68; and sis­ter-in-law Lynette Lith­gow-Pear­son, 57, were found dead by po­lice on De­cem­ber 13, 2001, and the Ap­peal Court re­served its de­ci­sion in March 2010.

At Pit­man's first ap­peal, some 14 grounds of com­plaints were ar­gued and the Ap­peal Court de­liv­ered judg­ment with­in nine months, in 2005. He took his case to the Privy Coun­cil, which grant­ed him a stay of ex­e­cu­tion against the sen­tence of death, and three years lat­er, in 2008, the Lon­don court gave its de­ci­sion in his sub­stan­tive ap­peal and re­mit­ted the mat­ter to the Court of Ap­peal for de­ter­mi­na­tion.

The Court of Ap­peal was to rule on the com­plaint that the pris­on­er had a low IQ and fur­ther psy­chi­atric ex­am­i­na­tions were need­ed. Progress of the mat­ter was spread over two years be­cause the sched­ules of sev­er­al ex­perts, in­clud­ing two for­eign doc­tors, had to be tak­en in­to ac­count. Hear­ing was con­clud­ed in March 2010.