The gov­ern­ment has got­ten a cat­e­gor­i­cal ‘no’ from In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Sophia Chote SC as it at­tempts to pass amend­ments to the bail bill.

In the pro­posed amend­ment the gov­ern­ment is ask­ing the Sen­ate to ap­prove leg­is­la­tion which would de­ny bail to any­one found in pos­ses­sion of ar­tillery or au­to­mat­ic firearms, grenade, bombs or oth­er sim­i­lar mis­siles for 120 days.

But as she con­tributed to the de­bate Sophia Chote, Se­nior Coun­sel, ex­pressed a lack of con­fi­dence in the plan, “So this whole thing about we’ll keep you in­side for 120 days right so you could get your tri­al done that’s a laugh, that’s a laugh, that’s an in­sult to my in­tel­li­gence in the third decade of prac­tis­ing law in the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Who gets a tri­al done in 120 days?”

She said the on­ly pur­pose for in­car­cer­at­ing a sus­pect for 120 days is pun­ish­ment.

The Se­nior Coun­sel al­so iden­ti­fied to the gov­ern­ment that the con­sti­tu­tion al­ready ad­dress­es such is­sues.

“We are not a Court of Ap­peal, we are leg­is­la­tors. The Bail Act pro­vides that if the pros­e­cu­tion is dis­sat­is­fied with the de­ci­sion of a mag­is­trate, or if an ac­cused per­son is dis­sat­is­fied with the de­ci­sion of a mag­is­trate there is a le­gal fo­rum for ei­ther the pros­e­cu­tion or the ac­cused per­son to go be­fore the High Court and ask for bail to be re­voked or that con­di­tions be placed on the bail.”

She said “quite frankly” it is not her job to do as a sen­a­tor.

She made it clear that there is no rea­son to “cir­cum­vent” the law when there are per­fect­ly valid op­tions open to the par­ties in such cas­es.

“Court mat­ters are court mat­ters, we as leg­is­la­tors must re­spect the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers.”

The in­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor then al­lud­ed to the fact that the gov­ern­ment was re­act­ing to re­cent pub­lic crit­i­cism be­ing lev­elled against a mag­is­trate.

In Sep­tem­ber of this year, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith chas­tised Mag­is­trate Aden Stroude for grant­i­ng bail to an ac­cused charged re­cent­ly with pos­ses­sion of nine AR15 as­sault ri­fles.

He al­so con­demned Stroude for rep­ri­mand­ing po­lice of­fi­cers.

“We must not be here for knee jerk re­ac­tions be­cause a pub­lic of­fi­cial is an­noyed be­cause his of­fi­cers were treat­ed bad­ly.”

She ques­tioned whether is­sues be­ing brought to the Sen­ate were be­ing con­flat­ed be­cause of the elec­tion sea­son.

“Our be­lieved coun­try is not at war, if we were at war we wouldn’t be hav­ing two de­mo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions com­ing up.”

Chote said she had a fun­da­men­tal prob­lem with be­ing con­stant­ly asked by the gov­ern­ment to make ex­cep­tions to what the con­sti­tu­tion pro­vides for.

She al­so made ref­er­ence to a me­dia re­port where Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith re­port­ed­ly said he didn’t know how long the in­quiry would take in­to the Nao­mi Nel­son shoot­ing be­cause bal­lis­tics could take up to 6 years.

“So is it that there is one prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence when po­lice of­fi­cers are be­ing con­sid­ered as pos­si­ble sus­pects in the shoot­ing of a young girl and one for oth­er per­sons? I didn’t know that our con­sti­tu­tion ap­plies dif­fer­ent­ly to dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories of peo­ple.”

She said she op­posed the pro­posed amend­ments.

“I could be stand­ing alone at the end of the day so be it.”

She de­scribed them as un­con­sti­tu­tion­al, not war­rant­ed in law and not war­rant­ed in fact.