The cur­rent con­flict be­tween the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's of­fice and the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions seems to have been in­evitable. While both posts are charged with up­hold­ing es­sen­tial el­e­ments of law in the pub­lic in­ter­est, they are ex­pect­ed to func­tion with dif­fer­ent re­port­ing lines and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. The role of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions is an ap­point­ment to pub­lic of­fice and is a pil­lar in the ar­chi­tec­ture of the le­gal sys­tem, while the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al is a po­lit­i­cal ap­point­ment, re­port­ing to Cab­i­net and re­spond­ing to po­lit­i­cal di­rec­tives and strate­gies.

In a per­fect world, the two le­gal re­spon­si­bil­i­ties would mesh to de­liv­er le­gal di­rec­tion and ser­vices to the pub­lic which would ul­ti­mate­ly ben­e­fit all cit­i­zens. Ever since Trinidad and To­ba­go be­came a re­pub­lic, how­ev­er, the con­flict­ing ori­en­ta­tions of the two posts have be­come a con­stant flash­point of dif­fer­ing opin­ion on day-to-day ex­e­cu­tion, most no­tably in re­cent mem­o­ry be­tween for­mer AG John Je­re­mie and for­mer DPP Ge­of­frey Hen­der­son. The same dy­nam­ic has sparked dif­fer­ences be­tween pub­lic ser­vants and min­is­ters of gov­ern­ment through­out our in­de­pen­dent po­lit­i­cal his­to­ry, but in this mat­ter, what's at stake is the fun­da­men­tal is­sue of pro­ce­dur­al law and the de­liv­ery of jus­tice in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The DPP has the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for di­rect­ing whether pros­e­cu­tions will pro­ceed, con­tin­ue or be dis­con­tin­ued for any cas­es brought to his of­fice, while the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al is ex­pect­ed to, among oth­er re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, re­fer mat­ters of in­ter­est to the DPP for pros­e­cu­tion. The in­fer­ence here be­ing that hav­ing passed cas­es to the DPP, these cas­es will be well con­struct­ed and pros­e­cutable. The re­la­tion­ship be­tween AG Anand Ram­lo­gan and DPP Roger Gas­pard seems des­tined for points of con­flict as shown by at least two re­cent is­sues that have point­ed to sit­u­a­tions in which the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's of­fice sought, per­haps through an ex­cess of en­thu­si­asm, to overin­struct and over­lap the func­tions of the Of­fice of the DPP.

In the Princes Town Mag­is­trates' Court on Fri­day, Mag­is­trate In­drani Ce­de­no was told that files for the case had been sent to Pamela El­der, SC, for le­gal ad­vice. El­der is part of a team of lawyers as­sem­bled by AG Anand Ram­lo­gan to of­fer ad­vice to the po­lice on mat­ters aris­ing dur­ing the state of emer­gency (SoE), par­tic­u­lar­ly those un­der the An­ti-Gang Act No 10 of 2011. Mag­is­trate Ce­de­no point­ed out to Sgt Fe­lix Fer­gu­son that due process is that po­lice charge and the DPP pros­e­cutes. At­tor­ney for the State Richard Valere agreed with the mag­is­trate, not­ing that the ac­tion was an im­plied in­sult to the le­gal re­sources of the Of­fice of the DPP. In an­oth­er re­cent ac­tion, DPP Roger Gas­pard dis­missed the cas­es against the group of young men known col­lec­tive­ly as the Nel­son Street 21,who were among the first cit­i­zens ar­rest­ed af­ter the im­po­si­tion of the SoE.

The DPP's dis­pas­sion­ate eval­u­a­tion of the case file for the group was in­struc­tive. Gas­pard dis­missed the CCTV footage as legal­ly un­re­lat­ed to the ar­rests and dis­missed the case for which there were no wit­ness­es or state­ments, a "sheer lack of ev­i­dence" as he de­scribed it. Why the po­lice, with video footage clear­ly de­scrib­ing a pat­tern of ca­su­al theft on Nel­son Street, did not mount a stake-out to catch the felons in the act and pros­e­cute them af­ter the im­ages were cap­tured six months ago re­mains a sep­a­rate, though con­fus­ing mat­ter. There should be no doubt in the minds of any clear-think­ing ob­serv­er that the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al must pur­sue a man­date of max­imis­ing the im­pact of the pre­vail­ing SoE and jus­ti­fy­ing its con­tin­u­ance.

That's a log­i­cal and ex­pect­ed part of his role in gov­ern­ment and as an em­i­nent le­gal mind, it's to be ex­pect­ed that he would en­cour­age the pur­suit of crim­i­nals at this time, with­in the bound­aries of the law. With a man­date to pros­e­cute crime for the State, how­ev­er, DPP Gas­pard has an even more crit­i­cal role in this process as the hand on the sword of right­eous jus­tice. His re­cent de­ci­sion to ho­n­our the let­ter of the law in di­rect­ing the non-pros­e­cu­tion of peo­ple held dur­ing the SoE is a com­mend­able read­ing of his le­gal re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and sends a clear sig­nal that re­as­sures the pub­lic that jus­tice is be­ing ca­pa­bly ad­min­is­tered.