Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard and his of­fice do not have the nec­es­sary sup­port from the State and af­fil­i­at­ed or­gan­i­sa­tions to do the tasks asked of them. To com­pound the sit­u­a­tion, wors­en­ing crime in Trinidad and To­ba­go has left the DPP's of­fice more and more over­whelmed and un­able to pros­e­cute many mat­ters ef­fec­tive­ly.

At­tor­neys who once worked as pros­e­cu­tors at the DPP's of­fice, but left af­ter be­ing frus­trat­ed out of the sys­tem, were speak­ing with the Sun­day Guardian af­ter Mon­day’s dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of the Pi­ar­co 3 cor­rup­tion case in­volv­ing for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day, Oma Pan­day, for­mer min­is­ter Car­los John, as well as busi­ness­man Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh.

"You do not have the sup­port of the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer and re­al­ly all of these peo­ple. There’s re­al­ly a lack of un­der­stand­ing of the role of a pros­e­cu­tor and the im­por­tance of a pros­e­cu­tor in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem," for­mer act­ing state coun­sel Renu­ka Ramb­ha­jan, who worked in the DPP’s of­fice for 11 years, lament­ed.

"Every­body is speak­ing about the fail­ure of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and they are strength­en­ing all of the stake­hold­ers ex­cept the pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al arm of the State. They are strength­en­ing the po­lice. They are strength­en­ing the ju­di­cia­ry, but the per­sons who are to speak for those who are vic­tims of crime re­main unas­sist­ed.

"How could you pos­si­bly have 60 at­tor­neys to deal with mat­ters across the coun­try when you have a mur­der rate that is gal­lop­ing be­yond 300 mat­ters a year? It is just too much work."

Ac­cord­ing to Ramb­ha­jan, to func­tion ef­fi­cient­ly, the of­fice re­quires at least 200 at­tor­neys, as well as a reg­u­lar and ef­fi­cient train­ing pro­gramme.

"Not on­ly that, we need to keep the ones who have done yeo­man ser­vice. Pros­e­cut­ing in the DPP of­fice is like this–You have to work hard in the trench­es and be a foot sol­dier be­fore you could be an of­fi­cer and a lieu­tenant. But what hap­pens is that af­ter be­ing in the trench­es for so long, you get frus­trat­ed and you leave and you take with you all the ex­pe­ri­ence you have got­ten. "The ex­o­dus in the DPP of­fice can on­ly be stopped if there is recog­ni­tion by the CPO that the DPP’s of­fice and the role of the pros­e­cu­tor is in­trin­sic to the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and so spe­cif­ic are the re­quire­ments of a coun­cil that the com­pen­sa­tion pack­age must be com­pet­i­tive. It must be. Oth­er­wise, you will on­ly ever at­tract ju­nior at­tor­neys who are look­ing to come and get the ex­pe­ri­ence and then roll out," she said.

The at­tor­ney, with more than 16 years of ex­pe­ri­ence, lament­ed that staff goes with the in­tent of work­ing for the right rea­sons–seek­ing to make a dif­fer­ence, but end up frus­trat­ed.

"I was one of them who was frus­trat­ed out of the sys­tem. I nev­er want­ed to leave the DPP’s of­fice. And it was with a heavy heart that I left. And had I stayed, I would have now been in the rank of Deputy Di­rec­tor. It means that you have ju­nior staff el­e­vat­ed in­to se­nior po­si­tions with­out the rel­e­vant ex­pe­ri­ence, and you have a mass of ju­nior at­tor­neys who do not have the ex­pe­ri­ence and are pros­e­cut­ing mat­ters for the lay­man who doesn’t feel they get a prop­er day in court," Ramb­ha­jan com­plained.

"So the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is fail­ing on all quar­ters, and every­body just talk­ing and no­body do­ing noth­ing. No­body is re­al­ly try­ing to fix things. And you know who is suf­fer­ing? The man who get chopped, or the child who get raped, and it takes 20 years for a hear­ing. I am do­ing mur­der tri­als and now get­ting a hear­ing for the first time in 2022 and they were charged in 2012, and one of them was in 2007."

Ac­cord­ing to Ramb­ha­jan, the of­fice is not on­ly deal­ing with a lack of re­sources from the Gov­ern­ment.

Many po­lice of­fi­cers, she said, make it dif­fi­cult for a suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tion be­cause they sim­ply do not know what they are do­ing some­times.

"A pros­e­cu­tor comes at the end of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion and very of­ten, the pros­e­cu­tor has to turn of­fi­cer and in­ves­ti­ga­tor and tell po­lice go back and do this and do that next. So every­body is pass­ing the buck, every­body is pass­ing the buck be­cause the DPP is a con­sti­tu­tion­al of­fice that re­quires si­lence and in­de­pen­dence.

"This is not a new song. When I sat as a tem­po­rary sen­a­tor (with the Op­po­si­tion), I raised it. When I ar­gued the Ev­i­dence Amend­ment Act, they passed leg­is­la­tion and were talk­ing about do­ing iden­ti­fi­ca­tion by pho­tographs and so, but they don’t have pa­per to print pho­tographs for tri­al. So how is a pros­e­cu­tor sup­posed to pros­e­cute a mat­ter if they have no pho­to of the scene of the crime?" Ramb­ha­jan asked pas­sion­ate­ly.

Ramb­ha­jan re­called that when she first joined the crim­i­nal de­fence bar, she heard sto­ries of cas­es that sound­ed too far-fetched to be­lieve. But then hav­ing worked in the sys­tem, she re­alised it was not hy­per­bole.

"You deal with dif­fi­cult of­fi­cers. You try to lo­cate wit­ness­es. And what you have are sys­tems where you are try­ing your best, you get a con­vic­tion and then it gets over­turned. You come back and do an­oth­er case, wit­ness­es are not avail­able, pros­e­cu­tors are deal­ing with a lack of re­sources, you are deal­ing with in­ad­e­quate in­ves­ti­ga­tions, deal­ing with hes­i­tant or re­luc­tant wit­ness­es, deal­ing with poor ev­i­dence, and deal­ing with a so­cial malaise when it comes to the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem," she said.

"I have seen with my own eyes where the po­lice are charg­ing peo­ple just be­cause. Where the po­lice are tak­ing ad­van­tage of peo­ple. And then you’re writ­ing to the rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers and you get no re­sponse. So what is the av­er­age man to do, who does not have mon­ey to af­ford se­nior coun­sel or even me?"

On the pos­i­tive side, Ramb­ha­jan said the cre­ation of the pub­lic de­fend­er's de­part­ment has proven to be a huge suc­cess. She said the de­part­ment pro­vides fo­cused at­tor­neys with the ex­pe­ri­ence to deal with crim­i­nal mat­ters.

Lee Merry

'Fair and time­ly pros­e­cu­tion is not pri­or­i­ty for those hold­ing purse strings'

An­oth­er well-re­spect­ed for­mer state pros­e­cu­tor Lee Mer­ry agreed with many of the points made by Ramb­ha­jan.

He agreed that DPP Gas­pard does not have the re­sources to ad­e­quate­ly per­form the tasks re­quired of him.

"Crime has been on the in­crease for many years and there are oth­er fac­tors which af­fect the pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al work­load, such as the in­creased fo­cus of in­ves­ti­ga­to­ry bod­ies on white-col­lar crime and the open­ing of var­i­ous spe­cialised courts. But we have not seen a con­comi­tant beef­ing up of the State’s pros­e­cu­tion de­part­ment. On the con­trary, the ranks of the DPP’s of­fice, par­tic­u­lar­ly at a more se­nior lev­el, have been di­min­ish­ing over the years," said Mer­ry who worked at the DPP's of­fice for three years.

"The more per­ti­nent ques­tion is, why has this been al­lowed to hap­pen? The on­ly plau­si­ble an­swer is that for those who hold the purse strings, the fair and time­ly pros­e­cu­tion of crim­i­nals is not a pri­or­i­ty. A cal­cu­la­tion has been made that the rights of de­fen­dants and vic­tims do not bring the mass­es to the bal­lot box.

"Cyn­ics might al­so point to the grow­ing list of pub­lic fig­ures who have seem­ing­ly ben­e­fit­ed from the bro­ken crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem in sup­port of an ar­gu­ment that the sta­tus quo is self-serv­ing. Af­ter all, a di­rect con­se­quence of strength­en­ing the sys­tem will be the hold­ing to ac­count all law­break­ers, re­gard­less of their wealth or af­fil­i­a­tion."

Last Thurs­day, Gas­pard dis­con­tin­ued the Pi­ar­co 3 case–con­sid­ered one of the biggest cor­rup­tion cas­es in the coun­try’s his­to­ry–say­ing that there would have been ‘re­al dif­fi­cul­ty’ in achiev­ing a fair prospect of con­vic­tion.

Ju­di­cia­ry sta­tis­tics

In Sep­tem­ber 2022, Op­po­si­tion MP Sad­dam Ho­sein, cit­ing ju­di­cia­ry sta­tis­tics, said that on­ly nine mur­ders were de­ter­mined dur­ing the law term 2020 to 2021.

Ho­sein, who said he filed ques­tions to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry, said the da­ta showed that for the law term 2019-2020, 23 mur­ders were de­ter­mined.

Ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics from the ju­di­cia­ry’s most re­cent­ly pub­lished an­nu­al re­port, 2020-2021, a to­tal of 14,732 mat­ters were filed at the Supreme Court and a to­tal of 8,983 mat­ters were de­ter­mined–a clear­ance rate of 61 per cent.

There were 35 mat­ters filed be­fore the Supreme Court for mur­der or at­tempt­ed mur­der, with nine de­ter­mined.

As of Ju­ly 31, 2021, 223 crim­i­nal ap­peals were pend­ing for four or more years; 19 were pend­ing for three to four years; 24 were pend­ing for two to three years; 28 were pend­ing for one to two years; and eight were pend­ing for one year or less.

Be­fore the Chil­dren’s Court, there were 185 crim­i­nal in­dictable mat­ters and 76 crim­i­nal sum­ma­ry mat­ters pend­ing for a year or more.

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice, there were 207,881 re­port­ed crimes in the coun­try be­tween 2015 to 2020.

Attorney General Reginald Armour

KERWIN PIERRE

Lack of re­sources not a sat­is­fac­to­ry ex­cuse says Ar­mour

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, re­spond­ing to the per­spec­tives shared by the two for­mer pros­e­cu­tors at the DPP’s of­fice, said the is­sue of a lack of re­sources im­pact­ed all of T&T’s in­sti­tu­tions and was not lim­it­ed to the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions.

“The DPP is not be­ing de­lib­er­ate­ly starved of re­sources, as in­deed the re­al­i­ty of the un­oc­cu­pied Park Street of­fice shows. I can see no po­lit­i­cal ben­e­fit in the Gov­ern­ment de­lib­er­ate­ly un­der­re­sourc­ing the DPP.

“That is an un­sat­is­fac­to­ry ex­pla­na­tion for the un­der­per­for­mance of the DPP. Oth­er crit­i­cal arms of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem are al­so op­er­at­ing be­low ca­pac­i­ty, yet far more ef­fec­tive­ly,” he said.

“We need to crit­i­cal­ly ex­am­ine what are the sys­temic is­sues that are ham­per­ing the per­for­mance of the DPP’s of­fice.”

The AG said he would be mak­ing a full state­ment on the is­sue this week.