Derek Achong

“I do not have friends who are crim­i­nals.”

These were the words used by High Court Judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad yes­ter­day, as he re­spond­ed to com­ments made by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, in re­la­tion to his (Ram­per­sad’s) judg­ment in a con­tro­ver­sial law­suit brought by firearms deal­er Brent Thomas.

In a tele­vised state­ment deal­ing with the case last Mon­day, Hinds re­port­ed­ly stat­ed that “crim­i­nals have friends every­where in this coun­try. They have them in the Po­lice Ser­vice, they have them in the Cus­toms, in the Im­mi­gra­tion, in the De­fence Force, they have them in the Ju­di­cia­ry, they have them in Par­lia­ment.”

Ad­dress­ing at­tor­neys in the case at a hear­ing at the Wa­ter­front Ju­di­cial Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, called to de­cide on a time­line for sub­mis­sions on the com­pen­sa­tion that should be paid to Thomas, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad de­nied any ex­ter­nal in­ter­fer­ence in the de­ter­mi­na­tion of Thomas’ case, which is cur­rent­ly be­ing ap­pealed by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice.

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad said: “I do not know Brent Thomas, nor did I know of Brent Thomas be­fore this case, nor do I know any of his friends or fam­i­ly or ac­quain­tances.”

He added, “No one has lob­bied me with re­spect to this case. No one has reached out to me about this case, nor has any­one sought to in­flu­ence me in any way.”

Deal­ing specif­i­cal­ly with Hinds’ state­ment, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad de­scribed it as “rather un­for­tu­nate,” es­pe­cial­ly as it came from an at­tor­ney with sig­nif­i­cant ex­pe­ri­ence such as Hinds. He not­ed that it did not on­ly af­fect him, but all the 112 ju­di­cial of­fi­cers who are part of the Ju­di­cia­ry.

While he ad­mit­ted the Ju­di­cia­ry and, by ex­ten­sion, ju­di­cial of­fi­cers are not im­mune from le­git­i­mate crit­i­cism, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad said: “When one of its own of­fi­cers, in the con­text of dis­cussing a case be­fore the court, a case which is not yet even com­plet­ed be­fore the court, says to the na­tion that “crim­i­nals have friends in the Ju­di­cia­ry,” the ob­vi­ous in­ten­tion is to more than just crit­i­cise the Ju­di­cia­ry but to go fur­ther to sug­gest that, in some way, il­le­gal­i­ty is in­flu­enc­ing the de­ci­sions of these judges, mas­ters, and mag­is­trates, there­by jeop­ar­dis­ing the Ju­di­cia­ry as a whole.”

He added, “When viewed in the con­text of this case be­fore this court, this state­ment and the in­nu­en­do is very damn­ing. A state­ment and in­nu­en­do which this court can as­sure the na­tion is ab­solute­ly and to­tal­ly wrong.”

Deny­ing he was be­ing over­ly sen­si­tive on the is­sue, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad said judges can­not sit idle while there was a cloud of il­le­gal­i­ty and crim­i­nal­i­ty hang­ing over the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice.

“One has to, there­fore, be very care­ful mak­ing state­ments which may seem in­nocu­ous at first, but which car­ry a po­tent and dam­ag­ing ef­fect. Worse yet, if those state­ments are made with­out re­morse,” he said.

He said the state of af­fairs may give youths the mis­guid­ed view there are no sanc­tions or con­se­quences for mak­ing state­ments with­out re­gard to the truth.

“And that is a se­ri­ous threat to our so­ci­ety and is a grave source of dis­il­lu­sion­ment to right-think­ing mem­bers of so­ci­ety. But, iron­i­cal­ly, it is a source of com­fort to the very crim­i­nal­i­ty that so many in so­ci­ety de­cry,” he said.

While Jus­tice Ram­per­sad not­ed that in the past he would re­fer at­tor­neys to the Dis­ci­pli­nary Com­mit­tee of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion for sim­i­lar con­duct, he said he could not do so in this case, as Hinds was not a par­ty in the case and did not par­tic­i­pate in it.

He al­so said while he in­vit­ed Hinds to the hear­ing to clar­i­fy his state­ments, he (Hinds) ex­er­cised his choice not to at­tend.

“I mean him no ill will, nor do I mean him any dis­com­fort, notwith­stand­ing the fact that the feel­ing may not have been rec­i­p­ro­cat­ed,” he said.

“I sought clar­i­ty and have not re­ceived it. The cloud still ex­ists.”

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Law As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Lynette See­baran-Suite in­di­cat­ed that the as­so­ci­a­tion had al­ready is­sued a re­lease crit­i­cis­ing Hinds’ state­ment and was still con­sid­er­ing po­ten­tial fur­ther ac­tion.

In his ad­dress to the court, Fyard Ho­sein, SC, who is lead­ing Thomas’ le­gal team, echoed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments as Jus­tice Ram­per­sad over the po­ten­tial ef­fect of Hinds’ state­ment.

“We should low­er the tem­per­a­ture on the pub­lic de­bate be­cause pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions are los­ing pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence,” he said.

He not­ed that the con­cerns raised were not a per­son­al at­tack on Hinds, who he de­scribed as an old friend and for­mer client.

The par­ties even­tu­al­ly agreed to hold dis­cus­sions over fil­ing sub­mis­sions and ex­pert ev­i­dence to as­sist Jus­tice Ram­per­sad in as­sess­ing the com­pen­sa­tion for Thomas.

They are ex­pect­ed to pro­vide Jus­tice Ram­per­sad with a time­line by June 7, with him de­cid­ing whether it is ac­cept­able one week lat­er.

Thomas was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by De­vesh Ma­haraj, Sasha Bridge­mo­hans­ingh and Cheyenne Lu­go. The AG’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Gilbert Pe­ter­son, SC, Vanes­sa Gopaul, Svet­lana Dass, Michelle Ben­jamin, Lianne Thomas and Adana Hosang.

The as­so­ci­a­tion was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Aaron Ma­habir and Kavi­ta Roop-Boodoo.