The Court of Ap­peal has been asked to pro­vide guid­ance on the in­ter­pre­ta­tion and ap­pli­ca­tion of leg­is­la­tion and re­cent court rules in­tend­ed to im­prove the ef­fi­cien­cy of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. 

Ap­pel­late Judges Mark Mo­hammed and Ge­of­frey Hen­der­son yes­ter­day heard an ap­peal from a man, who is chal­leng­ing the re­fusal of a High Court Mas­ter to dis­miss four statu­to­ry rape charges against him af­ter pros­e­cu­tors failed to meet a set dead­line. 

The pro­ce­dur­al ap­peal is the first to be pur­sued since the Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure Rules and the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act (AJI­PA) were im­ple­ment­ed last year. 

The rules, sim­i­lar to those that were im­ple­ment­ed to im­prove civ­il lit­i­ga­tion in 1998, seek to mod­ernise the pro­ce­dure for crim­i­nal cas­es and in­tro­duce sanc­tions for non-com­pli­ance by pros­e­cu­tors and de­fence at­tor­neys. 

The leg­is­la­tion seeks to re­duce pro­tract­ed de­lays in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem by re­plac­ing lengthy pre­lim­i­nary en­quiries be­fore Mag­is­trates with quick­er suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ings be­fore High Court Mas­ters. 

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, in 2022, the man was charged with hav­ing sex with a 12-year-old girl. 

Af­ter AJI­PA was pro­claimed in De­cem­ber, last year, his case was trans­ferred to a Mas­ter for case man­age­ment and a suf­fi­cient hear­ing. 

Dur­ing an ini­tial hear­ing in Feb­ru­ary, the Mas­ter set dead­lines for pros­e­cu­tors to file wit­ness state­ments and the in­dict­ment against the man. 

The suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing was sched­uled to take place in April but when it came up, the Mas­ter held a sta­tus hear­ing based on a re­quest from pros­e­cu­tors for an ex­ten­sion to com­plet­ing their fil­ings. 

Al­though pros­e­cu­tors sub­se­quent­ly ad­mit­ted that they wrong­ly claimed that wit­ness state­ments had been filed, the Mas­ter re­fused an ap­pli­ca­tion to dis­charge the man on the ba­sis of the pros­e­cu­tors' de­lay. 

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions in the ap­peal at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day morn­ing, the man's lawyer Pe­ter Carter claimed that the Mas­ter should not have con­sid­ered the ex­ten­sion ap­pli­ca­tion as it was not prop­er­ly filed and there was no sup­port­ing ev­i­dence as re­quired. 

"At the suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing stage there is no go­ing back," he said. 

"The ap­pel­lant should not be pun­ished for the un­pre­pared­ness of the de­fen­dant," he added. 

Carter sug­gest­ed that the leg­is­la­tion and the rules had to be strict­ly fol­lowed. 

"It is im­por­tant that we re­spect and show ad­her­ence to at­tempts by the Par­lia­ment and the Rules Com­mit­tee, through leg­is­la­tion and the rules, to have our jus­tice sys­tem work­ing in an ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive man­ner," Carter said.  

He stat­ed that fail­ure to re­spect the rules and leg­is­la­tion would negate their po­ten­tial pos­i­tive ef­fects. 

"We would be in the same po­si­tion we were in be­fore," he said. 

In re­sponse, As­sis­tant Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Danielle Thomp­son called for the ap­peal to be dis­missed. 

She claimed that the de­lays in the man's case were due to "teething is­sues" with the in­tro­duc­tion of the new leg­is­la­tion and rules.

"This was lit­er­al­ly two months af­ter the in­tro­duc­tion of this regime," Thomp­son said, as she not­ed that there was no "fla­grant dis­re­gard" of the pol­i­cy.  

Thomp­son sug­gest­ed that the Mas­ter did have the dis­cre­tion to grant the ex­ten­sion even with­out an of­fi­cial ap­pli­ca­tion and filed ev­i­dence. 

"There must be some lev­el of flex­i­bil­i­ty with­in rea­son in crim­i­nal mat­ters to en­sure all par­ties re­ceive jus­tice," she said. 

At the end of the hear­ing, the ap­peal pan­el re­quest­ed fur­ther sub­mis­sions on how sim­i­lar rules are in­ter­pret­ed and ap­plied in var­i­ous Com­mon­wealth ju­ris­dic­tions. 

The man was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Yves Jacques Nichol­son and Mari­ah Ram­rat­tan.