For­mer chief mag­is­trate Maria Bus­by Ear­le-Cad­dle has been sworn in as a Puisne Judge of the Supreme Court of Ju­di­ca­ture.

She, along with Trevor Jones and In­drani Ce­de­no, were pre­sent­ed with their in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment by Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo on Tues­day at the Pres­i­dent’s House in St Ann’s.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the Ju­di­cia­ry ex­plained that their ap­point­ment as puisne judges was tem­po­rary, and was done to ac­tive­ly man­age the back­log re­duc­tion in crim­i­nal cas­es in the Supreme Court.

The re­lease said, “As the Ju­di­cia­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ues its ef­forts to en­hance the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, it has em­barked on a plan to re­duce the crim­i­nal case back­log at the Supreme Court of Trinidad and To­ba­go. The first stage of the plan has been to as­sign spe­cif­ic re­sources tasked with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ad­dress the back­log.”

Recog­nis­ing that the Crim­i­nal Back­log Re­duc­tion Project can on­ly suc­ceed with the ac­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion of its key stake­hold­ers, the Ju­di­cia­ry said it has in­vit­ed a num­ber of stake­hold­ers to par­tic­i­pate in a Back­log Sub-Com­mit­tee of the Crim­i­nal Jus­tice Com­mit­tee, in­clud­ing the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, the Pub­lic De­fend­er’s De­part­ment of the Le­gal Aid Ad­vi­so­ry Au­thor­i­ty and the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Bus­by Ear­le-Cad­dle suc­ceed­ed Mar­cia Ayres-Cae­sar, af­ter she was ap­point­ed to the High Court bench in 2017. How­ev­er, Ayres-Cae­sar’s ap­point­ment was marred with con­tro­ver­sy, as she was ac­cused of not de­clar­ing her un­fin­ished mat­ters in the Mag­is­trates’ Court to the Chief Jus­tice and re­signed two weeks lat­er.

Ayres-Cae­sar sued over the mat­ter the Court of Ap­peal sub­se­quent­ly ruled that she was “co­erced and forced out of of­fice” by the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (JLSC) and that her res­ig­na­tion was il­le­gal­ly ob­tained and should be ex­punged from the Pres­i­dent’s records.

Con­tact­ed for a com­ment on Bus­by Ear­le-Cad­dle’s ap­point­ment yes­ter­day, Se­nior Coun­sel Is­rael Khan ex­pressed con­fi­dence in her abil­i­ty to han­dle the job.

“I can say with­out hes­i­ta­tion she has the nec­es­sary mer­it abil­i­ty and in­tegri­ty to be pro­mot­ed to the high­er bench so I con­grat­u­late her,” Khan said.

Khan was al­so con­fi­dent that there would be no re­cur­rence of past trans­gres­sions that oc­curred with Ayres-Cae­sar’s ap­point­ment.

“I do not think we would have a re­peat of Cae­sar sit­u­a­tion be­cause by now they would have learned their les­son and I am sure be­fore she was sworn in as a High Court judge, all her part-heard mat­ters ought to have been com­plet­ed.”

Khan said he was not fa­mil­iar with Jones and Ce­de­no.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the Of­fice of Pres­i­dent, Bus­by Ear­le-Cad­dle was ap­point­ed a mag­is­trate in Jan­u­ary of 1995; se­nior mag­is­trate in De­cem­ber 2006 and Deputy Chief Mag­is­trate in Jan­u­ary 2017. Bus­by Ear­le-Cad­dle held the po­si­tion of Chief Mag­is­trate from March 2018.

Jones was ad­mit­ted to prac­tice at the Bar of Trinidad and To­ba­go in 2009 and in 2010, joined the Crim­i­nal Law De­part­ment of the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs, ris­ing to the po­si­tion of State Coun­sel III.

Ce­de­no was ap­point­ed a mag­is­trate in Jan­u­ary 1995 and a se­nior mag­is­trate in No­vem­ber 2002. In Jan­u­ary 2021, she was ap­point­ed a Mas­ter of the High Court and is a reg­is­tered cer­ti­fied me­di­a­tor for civ­il non-fam­i­ly and fam­i­ly mat­ters.