Her­bert Philip Vol­ney, who was last night fired as Jus­tice Min­is­ter by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, has of­ten been the cen­tre of con­tro­ver­sy-first dur­ing his ca­reer on the bench and lat­er through­out his two and a half years as a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter. Vol­ney was the third of eight chil­dren born to St Lu­cian Cyril Vol­ney and his Do­mini­can wife, Ros­alind, on June 8, 1953, at Ply­mouth in Montser­rat. He was ed­u­cat­ed at pri­ma­ry schools in An­tigua, Bar­ba­dos, St Kitts and Do­mini­ca, at­tend­ed St Mary's Acad­e­my in Do­mini­ca and then the Cave Hill cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. He spent many years trav­el­ling back and forth to Trinidad and To­ba­go but fi­nal­ly set­tled here in 1978 af­ter com­plet­ing his law stud­ies. He had the choice of go­ing to Do­mini­ca to be part of the po­lit­i­cal move­ment led by prime min­is­ter Eu­ge­nia Charles, or get­ting mar­ried and set­tling down in T&T.

He chose the lat­ter and took up a po­si­tion in the of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, where he pros­e­cut­ed many cas­es, in­clud­ing the in­fa­mous Navar­ro case of cor­rup­tion in­volv­ing the BWIA DC 9 and DC7 air­craft. He re­tired as As­sis­tant Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and worked in the law cham­bers of Karl Hud­son-Phillips, QC, un­til open­ing his own pri­vate law of­fice in 1991. In 1994 he was ap­point­ed a judge of the Supreme Court. Vol­ney reg­is­tered his most con­tro­ver­sial de­ci­sion in 1998, when he re­fused to ac­cept Dr Hughvon des Vi­gnes as an ex­pert wit­ness in the case of Brad Boyce, who was on tri­al for manslaugh­ter. This led to the ac­quit­tal of the de­fen­dant on the point that there was no com­pe­tent wit­ness to de­cide on the is­sue of cause of death. An­oth­er con­tro­ver­sial de­ci­sion by Vol­ney came on Ju­ly 14, 2006, when he grant­ed bail to Ja­maat al Mus­limeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr, who was charged with sedi­tion. Af­ter hav­ing been ini­tial­ly de­nied bail by Jus­tice Prakash Moo­sai on Jan­u­ary 30, 2006, Bakr was al­lowed bail by Vol­ney in the sum of $400,000, de­spite ob­jec­tions from the State. Vol­ney cit­ed Bakr's need for med­ical care as his rea­son for do­ing so.

By the time he re­tired from the ju­di­cia­ry on April 28, 2010, to stand for the con­stituen­cy of St Joseph in the gen­er­al elec­tion of that year, Vol­ney had presided over 400 High Court tri­als in Port-of-Spain, San Fer­nan­do and Scar­bor­ough. He was an­nounced as a UNC can­di­date just 18 days af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning dis­solved Par­lia­ment. Vol­ney was elect­ed to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and was ap­point­ed Min­is­ter of Jus­tice on May 28. Vol­ney stirred up con­tro­ver­sy in his first par­lia­men­tary ad­dress when he made dis­parag­ing re­marks about his for­mer boss, Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie, in his con­tri­bu­tion to the 2010/2011 bud­get de­bate. In Sep­tem­ber 2010, Vol­ney called for mur­der­ers to be pub­licly hanged in Wood­ford Square.

Vol­ney drew fire in No­vem­ber 2011 when he de­fend­ed a clause in the DNA Bill which would have al­lowed sam­ples to be tak­en from rape vic­tims with­out their con­sent. He de­scribed ob­jec­tions to the clause as "to­tal­ly un­ac­cept­able," but had to back down and amend it. The Jus­tice Min­is­ter found him­self the fo­cus of crit­i­cism ear­li­er this year for his state­ment that the Po­lice Ser­vice had be­come a "run­away ser­vice." He did so when he spoke on the death of At­i­ba Dun­can, who was shot by po­lice at Mt D'Or, Champs Fleurs. Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs called for the in­ter­ven­tion of John Sandy, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty at that time. Vol­ney weath­ered all those con­tro­ver­sies, main­tain­ing his min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lio through two Cab­i­net reshuf­fles by the Prime Min­is­ter. In the end, his role in the ear­ly procla­ma­tion of Sec­tion 34 of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Of­fences) Act proved his un­do­ing.