Derek Achong

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi has wel­comed a de­ci­sion of a High Court Judge to dis­miss a con­sti­tu­tion­al le­gal chal­lenge over mur­der be­ing a non-bail­able of­fence.

In a press re­lease yes­ter­day, Al-Rawi not­ed that Jus­tice Joan Charles, in her judg­ment de­liv­ered on Tues­day, had es­sen­tial­ly up­held his of­fice’s po­si­tion on the law­suit brought by for­mer mur­der ac­cused Ak­ili Charles.

“The case for the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was that from time im­memo­r­i­al Judges did not grant bail to a per­son who was charged for mur­der. Fur­ther­more, it was the State’s case that Par­lia­ment has the right to change the law in re­spect of the grant­i­ng of bail,” Al-Rawi said.

Al-Rawi did make note of the fact that de­spite her de­ci­sion on the case, Charles still ad­vo­cat­ed for Par­lia­ment to con­sid­er a re­view on leg­is­la­tion re­lat­ed to mur­der to con­sid­er in­tro­duc­ing dif­fer­ent de­grees based on the wide­ly vary­ing cir­cum­stances by which a per­son may take the life of an­oth­er.

“The Gov­ern­ment re­mains com­mit­ted to ad­vanc­ing leg­isla­tive re­form for the peace, or­der and good gov­er­nance of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go and will con­tin­ue to vig­or­ous­ly de­fend the rule of law,” he said.

He not­ed his of­fice would con­tin­ue with its ag­gres­sive leg­isla­tive and op­er­a­tional agen­da, which will be an­nounced in the com­ing weeks and in­clude pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions.

In the law­suit, Ak­ili Charles’ lawyers were con­tend­ing that this coun­try’s colo­nial age leg­is­la­tion on the is­sue should be struck down as was done in re­cent cas­es over this coun­try’s bug­gery and sedi­tion laws.

They ar­gued that the bail for mur­der should not be au­to­mat­ic but should be de­cid­ed by ju­di­cial of­fi­cers, as the blan­ket de­nial of bail, breached their ju­di­cial dis­cre­tion un­der the doc­trine of the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers.

Their po­si­tion was large­ly sup­port­ed by the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, which was added to the case as an in­ter­est­ed par­ty.

Re­spond­ing to the law­suit, at­tor­neys for the State claimed that the pro­vi­sion was saved from re­view as it was rat­i­fied in the Bail Act 1994.

Jus­tice Charles even­tu­al­ly agreed with the State.

“In my view, it is a func­tion of the leg­isla­tive arm of Gov­ern­ment, tak­ing in­to ac­count cur­rent so­ci­etal norms and any oth­er so­cial fac­tors it deems rel­e­vant, to de­cide whether the law re­lat­ing to bail for mur­der ought to be re­pealed, amend­ed or re­placed as has hap­pened in oth­er Caribbean ju­ris­dic­tions,” Jus­tice Charles said.

“Hav­ing de­ter­mined that the im­pugned leg­is­la­tion is ex­ist­ing law, I con­sid­er that it would amount to ju­di­cial over­reach to strike down, al­ter or re­place the said leg­is­la­tion,” she added.

How­ev­er, the judge still sug­gest­ed that par­lia­men­tary con­sid­er­a­tion of vary­ing de­grees of mur­der would be worth­while.

“While I agree that it may be a valu­able ex­er­cise to con­sid­er a re­view of the leg­is­la­tion gov­ern­ing mur­der, to take ac­count of the wide­ly vary­ing cir­cum­stances by which a per­son may take the life of an­oth­er, this is a task which falls with­in the do­main of the leg­isla­tive arm of gov­ern­ment,” she said.

Ak­ili Charles was rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Ganesh Sa­roop and Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al while the as­so­ci­a­tion was rep­re­sent­ed by Dou­glas Mendes, SC, Kiel Tack­lals­ingh and Kavi­ta Roop-Boodoo. Fyard Ho­sein, SC, Di­ane Kat­wa­roo and Te­nille Ramkissoon rep­re­sent­ed the State.