Former Chief Justice Sat Sharma.

The Judicial and Legal Service Commission (JLSC) has decided to drop four of the six disciplinary charges laid against Chief Magistrate Sherman Mc Nicolls. On the eve of the Privy Council appeal, the JLSC, in its written submissions, has decided not to pursue the four charges and will abide by the decisions of the Trinidad courts in quashing those charges. But the appeal goes on, with Mc Nicolls seeking to have two other charges, quashed. That appeal is listed before five Law Lords on November 9 in London. Mc Nicolls will be represented at the appeal by British Queen’s Counsel Michael Beloff, Ian Benjamin, Annabelle Sooklal and Tristan Jones. British QC Peter Knox, instructed by John Almeida, will appear for the JLSC. The JLSC laid six charges against Mc Nicolls, over his failure to give evidence for the prosecution against then Chief Justice Sat Sharma, on a charge of conspiracy to pervert the course of public justice. Mc Nicolls, who has been Chief Magistrate for the past ten years, was the State’s main witness against Sharma. But on March 5, 2007, Mc Nicolls went into the witness box at the preliminary inquiry before Magistrate Lianne Lee Kim and said he was not prepared to give evidence in the matter. As a result, the case collapsed and Sharma was exonerated.

The JLSC conducted an investigation into the matter, and Justice Sebastien Ventour recommended that the Chief Magistrate be charged. The JLSC filed six disciplinary charges against Mc Nicolls, arising out of his conduct at the preliminary inquiry. But, Mc Nicolls headed to the High Court, challenging the decision of the JLSC to charge him. On February 7, 2008, Justice Peter Jamadar quashed four of the six charges brought by the JLSC, but ruled that two of the charges be heard. Mc Nicolls appealed, and the JLSC, cross-appealed. On July 25, 2009, the Court of Appeal agreed with Jamadar and ordered that Mc Nicolls face just two charges. Mc Nicolls appealed to the Privy Council, while the JLSC cross-appealed, saying that it would like the four other charges reinstated. Mc Nicolls has filed four grounds in the Court of Appeal:

1) The decision to place him on two charges was ultra vires, because the allegation investigated by Ventour was not the same as the allegation which forms the subject matter of the two charges;
2) It was unfair, given the damage to his reputation resulting from press leaks and comments in the two months occurring before the charges were laid, to bring the two charges without giving him an opportunity to say why it would not be appropriate to bring them;
3) The charges are not sustainable in law, because the allegation that he told Peterson he was not prepared to testify, did not result in the discontinuance of the proceedings against Sharma;
4) Fairness demands that the charges be dropped, because he had to disclose his defence to the Mustill inquiry.

THE CHARGES
The charges against Mc Nicolls allege that he brought the judiciary and the JLSC into disrepute by informing Gilbert Peterson, SC, the lead prosecutor in the Sharma case and Carla Brown-Antoine, then Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), that he was “not prepared to testify further” in the inquiry. The dates of Mc Nicolls’ alleged misconduct are February 27, March 1 and March 5, the dates on which he signalled his unwillingness to Brown-Antoine and Peterson, and on which the Sharma case collapsed.