Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Act­ing Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Car­la Brown-An­toine is be­ing pro­posed to serve as a judge in the High Court of T&T.

The propo­si­tion has been made by the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vices Com­mis­sion (JLSC) to Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards. If the Pres­i­dent ap­points her, then the po­si­tion of act­ing DPP will be­come va­cant. No one has been ap­point­ed to the post of DPP. Ear­li­er this year, the JLSC had rec­om­mend­ed to Prime Min­ster Patrick Man­ning that Browne-An­toine be ap­point­ed to act as DPP un­til a can­di­date was cho­sen to take up the sub­stan­tive post.

This was done when for­mer DPP, Ge­of­frey Hen­der­son, was el­e­vat­ed to the High Court to serve as a judge. Browne-An­toine was shot down by Man­ning when he ve­toed her ap­point­ment. How­ev­er, he changed his mind and agreed.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Brown-An­toine's moth­er, Hazel Brown, said her daugh­ter was out of the coun­try and was ex­pect­ed to re­turn to work to­mor­row. Brown said: "One of the things about be­ing a judge is that it means be­ing out of the reach of the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate.

A re­lease from the ju­di­cia­ry's court pro­to­col and in­for­ma­tion man­ag­er, Jones P Madeira, is­sued yes­ter­day, stat­ed that Brown-An­toine, along with Jus­tices An­dre Mon­de­sir and Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh, had been pro­posed to the Pres­i­dent. Madeira, in a tele­phone in­ter­view, said he could not say who would re­place Brown-An­toine, should she be ap­point­ed. "She is not just walk­ing out the door. The Pres­i­dent has to as­sent to the ap­point­ment." Mon­de­sir and Boodoos­ingh are al­ready serv­ing on the Bench as tem­po­rary judges, and each has more than 15 years' ex­pe­ri­ence in the le­gal pro­fes­sion.

Back­ground In­fo

Car­la Brown-An­toine is a na­tion­al schol­ar­ship win­ner from St Joseph's Con­vent, Port-of-Spain. She at­tained her LLB from Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and her le­gal Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate from the Hugh Wood­ing Law School. Since 1989, Browne-An­toine has been with the of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions. She was al­so a course di­rec­tor for Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure and Prac­tice at the Hugh Wood­ing Law School dur­ing 2007-2008 and has de­liv­ered lec­tures and con­duct­ed train­ing work­shops or­gan­ised by the Law As­so­ci­a­tion and oth­er na­tion­al bod­ies.