Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has dis­re­gard­ed the Law As­so­ci­a­tion’s ad­vice to ini­ti­ate an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to mis­con­duct al­le­ga­tions against Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from me­dia dur­ing the post-Cab­i­net press brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s, yes­ter­day, Row­ley said he sought and re­ceived in­de­pen­dent le­gal ad­vice on the rec­om­men­da­tions made by the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, in De­cem­ber last year, and was ad­vised to take no ac­tion.

Row­ley said: “The le­gal ad­vice I have in­di­cates that I don’t need to or I should not ac­qui­esce to the Law As­so­ci­a­tion’s ad­vice, so we move on.”

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so de­fend­ed his de­ci­sion to seek in­de­pen­dent le­gal ad­vice on the is­sue.

“On mat­ters such as this, I do not ad­vise my­self,” Row­ley said, as he con­firmed that he made his de­ci­sion af­ter re­ceiv­ing the ad­vice, a few weeks ago.

How­ev­er, Row­ley de­clined to re­veal de­tails of his le­gal ad­vice in­clud­ing who gave it, as he promised to do so on a lat­er date.

Row­ley’s de­ci­sion on the is­sue ef­fec­tive brings the pos­si­bil­i­ty of im­peach­ment pro­ceed­ings against Archie to an end as he has the ex­clu­sive con­sti­tu­tion­al dis­cre­tion to ini­ti­ate such.

Un­der Sec­tion 137 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, the Pres­i­dent ap­points a tri­bunal af­ter mis­con­duct al­le­ga­tions against a CJ or a judge are re­ferred by the Prime Min­is­ter.

The tri­bunal, which in­cludes a chair­man and at least two oth­er mem­bers, all with ap­pel­late ju­di­cial ex­pe­ri­ence in Com­mon­wealth ju­ris­dic­tions, will then in­ves­ti­gate. The tri­bunal re­ports to the Privy Coun­cil, which then gives the Pres­i­dent rec­om­men­da­tions on what ac­tion, if any, should be tak­en.

Con­tact­ed for a re­sponse yes­ter­day, Law As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Dou­glas Mendes, SC, de­clined to com­ment as he said that the As­so­ci­a­tion’s ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil will meet to dis­cuss the de­vel­op­ment, next Tues­day.

The con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing Archie arose in late 2017 af­ter a se­ries of news­pa­per re­ports ac­cused Archie of at­tempt­ing to per­suade the judges to change their State-pro­vid­ed se­cu­ri­ty in favour of a pri­vate com­pa­ny in which his friend and con­vict­ed fraud­ster Dil­lian John­son worked.

Archie was al­so ac­cused of at­tempt­ing to fast-track Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) ap­pli­ca­tions for peo­ple rec­om­mend­ed by John­son, who has been con­vict­ed of fraud.

Short­ly af­ter the al­le­ga­tions sur­faced, John­son was wound­ed at a shoot­ing at his Gas­par­il­lo home. John­son fled to the Unit­ed King­dom was but was de­nied asy­lum that coun­try’s im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ties. How­ev­er, he was al­lowed to stay as he was grant­ed hu­man­i­tar­i­an pro­tec­tion for five years.

Archie was al­so linked to con­vict­ed fraud­ster Kern Romero, who was ac­cused of us­ing his al­leged friend­ship with Archie to de­fraud peo­ple. Romero died in hos­pi­tal, ear­ly last year.

Archie’s ini­tial si­lence on the al­le­ga­tions drew crit­i­cism from se­nior le­gal prac­ti­tion­ers and even some of Archie’s ju­di­cial col­leagues.

What prompt­ed the Law As­so­ci­a­tion to act?

While the as­so­ci­a­tion nev­er pub­licly dis­closed the in­ves­tiga­tive re­port com­piled by a spe­cial com­mit­tee, Guardian Me­dia was able to ex­am­ine the cor­re­spond­ing le­gal opin­ions of for­mer Grena­da At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Sir Fran­cis Alex­is, QC, and Ea­mon Courte­nay, SC, the for­mer AG of Be­lize.

Both dis­tin­guished le­gal lu­mi­nar­ies were asked to con­sid­er the ev­i­dence the com­mit­tee gath­ered over Archie’s al­leged links to con­vict­ed fraud­sters Dil­lian John­son and Kern Romero and his al­leged role in at­tempt­ing to fast-track hous­ing ap­pli­ca­tions for over a dozen per­sons be­tween 2013 and 2015.

In his ad­vice, Sir Fran­cis said that from the ev­i­dence, it ap­peared that the CJ did not rec­om­mend the names of three peo­ple to Row­ley be­cause he thought they were “needy and de­serv­ing”, but “be­cause the help of the Chief Jus­tice in this mat­ter was sought by his close per­son­al friend Kern Romero, who had re­ceived mon­ey from those three per­sons on his promis­ing them that he could get the CJ to in­ter­cede with the HDC on their be­half.”

He claimed that Archie’s friend­ship with Romero, “showed ex­treme­ly poor judge­ment, or lack of judge­ment, as Chief Jus­tice, in en­ter­ing and main­tain­ing or de­vel­op­ing a close per­son­al re­la­tion­ship with a per­son who has the po­ten­tial to bring the of­fice of Chief Jus­tice in­to dis­re­pute.”

Like Sir Fran­cis, Courte­nay al­so sug­gest­ed that im­peach­ment pro­ceed­ings would help to clear the air on the is­sue and help im­prove pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice.

He stat­ed that the al­le­ga­tions in the as­so­ci­a­tion’s fi­nal re­port were “se­ri­ous and some of them are, pri­ma fa­cie, cred­i­ble.”

“Fur­ther, the truth of the al­le­ga­tions re­quire in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­cause they have, as un­der­scored by the (lo­cal) Court of Ap­peal, had a se­ri­ous neg­a­tive im­pact on the Ju­di­cia­ry of T&T. In the cir­cum­stances, the Chief Jus­tice should be giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to vin­di­cate his rep­u­ta­tion and to pro­vide full and frank ex­pla­na­tions so that pub­lic con­fi­dence can, if at all, be re­stored in this im­por­tant branch of gov­ern­ment,” Courte­nay stat­ed.

Both Courte­nay and Sir Fran­cis found that there was a suf­fi­cient ba­sis for the PM to re­fer the mat­ter to the Pres­i­dent and that the ques­tion of re­mov­ing the Chief Jus­tice ought to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

How­ev­er, they both ac­cept­ed that it was for the PM and not the as­so­ci­a­tion to de­cide.

What Law As­so­ci­a­tion re­port said

In No­vem­ber 2017, the as­so­ci­a­tion’s coun­cil called on Archie to re­spond to the al­le­ga­tion that he dis­cussed the judges’ meet­ing with John­son.

It then ap­point­ed a sub-com­mit­tee to in­ves­ti­gate the al­le­ga­tions and sought the le­gal ad­vice from Sir Fran­cis Alex­is, QC, of Grena­da and Ea­mon Courte­nay, QC, of Be­lize, to de­ter­mine if the al­le­ga­tions were suf­fi­cient to trig­ger im­peach­ment pro­ceed­ings un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion was ini­tial­ly stymied af­ter Archie ob­tained an in­junc­tion block­ing the probe. The in­junc­tion was over­turned by three of his col­leagues from the Court of Ap­peal and their de­ci­sion was up­held by the Privy Coun­cil in Au­gust, last Au­gust.

While the Privy Coun­cil ruled that the as­so­ci­a­tion’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion did not usurp the im­peach­ment pro­ceed­ings, it warned over the po­ten­tial im­pact of dis­sem­i­nat­ing the find­ings of fact in its re­port.

Pres­i­dent of the UK Supreme Court Baroness Bren­da Hale, who wrote the judge­ment, said: “If the as­so­ci­a­tion’s con­clu­sions on the facts are pub­lished, there would be wide­spread me­dia cov­er­age and pres­sure on the Chief Jus­tice to re­sign, thus un­der­min­ing the very pro­tec­tion which the Sec­tion 137 process is de­signed to give him.”

On De­cem­ber 10, last year, the as­so­ci­a­tion’s mem­ber­ship met to de­cide whether to re­fer the re­port and cor­re­spond­ing ad­vice to Row­ley. The mo­tion was even­tu­al­ly passed by a mar­gin of 150 to 32.

It was the sec­ond mo­tion con­cern­ing Archie, which was passed by the as­so­ci­a­tion’s mem­ber­ship, over the past two years.

On June 1, 2017, the as­so­ci­a­tion passed a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion in Archie and the then mem­bers of the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (JLSC) over their han­dling of the short-lived ju­di­cial ap­point­ment of for­mer chief mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar.

Al­though Archie re­sist­ed the as­so­ci­a­tion’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion and re­peat­ed­ly re­fused to com­ment di­rect­ly to the al­le­ga­tions, he has gen­er­al­ly de­nied any wrong­do­ing.

In Oc­to­ber, last year, the Ju­di­cia­ry is­sued a re­lease over the al­le­ga­tions af­ter they were re­hashed in a fresh se­ries of re­ports.

The al­le­ga­tions were de­scribed as false and re­cy­cled in­nu­en­dos.

“The Chief Jus­tice notes the now trans­par­ent re­cur­ring modus operan­di of seek­ing to hound him out of of­fice us­ing tired tac­tics of in­nu­en­do with re­liance and com­ment on that in­nu­en­do,” the re­lease said.