Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour yes­ter­day told the Sen­ate that Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard has re­fused the ad­di­tion of lawyers with­in the Com­mon­wealth to aid in ad­dress­ing his staffing is­sues.

How­ev­er, Gas­pard says the AG’s com­ment seem­ing­ly “over­sim­pli­fied what tran­spired.”

The ef­fec­tive­ness of the DPP’s Of­fice and the man­age­ment of Dana See­ta­hal’s mur­der case came up in the up­per house as sen­a­tors de­bat­ed a bill seek­ing to mod­ernise and ex­pe­dite the wheels of jus­tice.

In de­bat­ing amend­ments to the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) (Amend­ment) Bill, 2024, Ar­mour hailed the abo­li­tion of pre­lim­i­nary en­quiries as a piv­otal mile­stone for a more ef­fec­tive jus­tice sys­tem.

Along with the elec­tron­ic fil­ing of court doc­u­ments, judge-alone tri­als and the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of cer­tain road of­fences, the AG boast­ed that Gov­ern­ment had made great strides in speed­ing up the jus­tice sys­tem.

How­ev­er, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al-Ram­di­al brought up the per­ceiv­able stand­still in the See­ta­hal case as a pos­si­ble ex­am­ple of where stake­hold­ers with­in the jus­tice sys­tem, par­tic­u­lar­ly the of­fice of the DPP, may not be ready or equipped for this par­a­digm shift.

“The case of one of our le­gal lu­mi­nar­ies who was un­for­tu­nate­ly tak­en way too soon from us, and that mat­ter pend­ing and there be­ing some con­fu­sion about the trans­mis­sion of a com­mit­tal bun­dle, high­lights the need for us to stream­line process­es,” Lutch­me­di­al-Ram­di­al sug­gest­ed.

On May 7, Gas­pard, in a me­dia re­lease, ques­tioned why the Ju­di­cia­ry sent the com­mit­tal bun­dles on See­ta­hal’s case elec­tron­i­cal­ly, rather than de­liv­er­ing the phys­i­cal doc­u­ments to his of­fice, as he said the law re­quired. The DPP added that his of­fice must ex­am­ine these doc­u­ments be­fore de­ter­min­ing the of­fences for which an in­dict­ment should be filed.

Com­ment­ing on the is­sue, Lutch­me­di­al-Ram­di­al said, “I would hope that un­for­tu­nate sce­nario that played out would lead to some deep­er analy­sis as to what changes are to be made, whether they be leg­isla­tive or whether they be just sim­ply pro­ce­dur­al things that have to be put in place, whether it’s a re­source prob­lem or whether, sim­ply, peo­ple should just start speak­ing to each oth­er a lit­tle more fre­quent­ly.”

She said when these things oc­cur it erodes pub­lic trust in the le­gal sys­tem.

But in wind­ing up the de­bate, Ar­mour said his of­fice is ac­tive­ly seek­ing to ad­dress chal­lenges at the DPP’s of­fice. He, how­ev­er, told the sen­ate that Gas­pard re­fused their ini­tial in­ter­ven­tion.

“The fact of the mat­ter is my of­fice is hard at work ac­tive­ly seek­ing to fill va­can­cies at the of­fice of the DPP. Last year, I wrote to the Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tari­at to Baroness Scot­land, I got her agree­ment to en­gage with me and I en­gaged with the DPP to bring Com­mon­wealth lawyers Trinidad to staff the of­fice of the DPP. The DPP said no thank you.

“We are now in the process of fill­ing va­can­cies on short-term con­tracts. The Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice is in the process of do­ing that, as we speak va­can­cies are be­ing filled,” Ar­mour ex­plained.

He then turned his at­ten­tion to the con­tentious is­sue of a new head­quar­ters for the DPP’s of­fice.

“As we speak, there is a build­ing that is be­ing sourced so the DPP will have a build­ing to move in­to and to give him the spa­tial re­quire­ments that he needs and at his re­quest, we are cur­rent­ly mak­ing pro­vi­sion for IT (in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy) fa­cil­i­ties for the DPP,” Ar­mour said, adding in­no­va­tion can­not be stopped at every step when­ev­er a prob­lem is en­coun­tered.

Guardian Me­dia sought a re­sponse from Gas­pard to the as­ser­tion that he turned down the of­fer of for­eign lawyers.

Re­spond­ing via text mes­sage, Gas­pard said, “That can­not be ex­plained on this medi­um. It’s in­ter­est­ing that ap­par­ent­ly the ‘no thank you’ wasn’t con­tex­tu­alised by the AG, that is ac­cord­ing to the mes­sage you just sent me.”

“Re­al­ly can’t speak now,” he con­clud­ed.

In April 2023, Gas­pard told a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment that his of­fice re­mains se­vere­ly ham­strung by a hu­man re­source is­sue, in­clud­ing that the of­fice does not have a hu­man re­sources man­ag­er to deal with hir­ing and man­age­ment of staff.

The three amend­ments to the bill were even­tu­al­ly passed unan­i­mous­ly. The bill pro­vides for the abo­li­tion of pre­lim­i­nary en­quiries and for ini­tial and suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ings by a Mas­ter of the High Court.