The Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (JLSC) has in­sti­tut­ed a dis­ci­pli­nary charge against a mag­is­trate who made con­tro­ver­sial state­ments against at­tor­neys who prac­tice be­fore him.

Doc­u­ments ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia showed that al­most two weeks ago, the JLSC, through act­ing Di­rec­tor of Per­son­nel Ad­min­is­tra­tion De­bra Parkin­son, wrote to Mag­is­trate Bri­an Dabideen to in­form him of the de­ci­sion to in­sti­tute a mis­con­duct charge against him.

The charge al­leges that by mak­ing the state­ments, Dabideen con­duct­ed him­self in a man­ner which brought the JLSC in­to dis­re­pute.

In ac­cor­dance with the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion Reg­u­la­tions, Dabideen was giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ad­mit or de­ny the charge. The JLSC is now ex­pect­ed to ap­point a dis­ci­pli­nary tri­bunal to as­sess the case and de­ter­mine what ac­tion, if any, should be tak­en.

Dabideen was re­ferred to the JLSC by High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad in May last year. The re­fer­ral came af­ter Seep­er­sad presided over a civ­il law­suit, in which uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent Giselle Sama­roo claimed that Dabideen made prej­u­di­cial state­ments against her dur­ing a hear­ing of her as­sault and ma­li­cious dam­age case at the Ari­ma Mag­is­trate’s Court on Oc­to­ber 6, 2017.

Dabideen re­port­ed­ly told her and her at­tor­ney: “Well, then, you are go­ing to have a very warm time with me. You un­der­stand? You are not go­ing to win any cas­es; your client all go­ing to go to jail; you are not go­ing to get any bail; I am go­ing to keep you wait­ing in court whole day, you un­der­stand? All sorts of things I could em­ploy.”

Seep­er­sad had ini­tial­ly grant­ed Sama­roo per­mis­sion to pur­sue her claim but re­versed his de­ci­sion af­ter court tran­scripts, which were not avail­able at the time of fil­ing of the law­suit, re­vealed that the com­ments were not di­rect­ed at her. Sama­roo has since ap­pealed Seep­er­sad’s de­ci­sion in her case.

While he ruled that Sama­roo could not claim she was ag­griev­ed by Dabideen’s state­ments, Seep­er­sad still not­ed that the state­ments had the po­ten­tial to af­fect pub­lic con­fi­dence in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice.

Seep­er­sad said: “This court is con­cerned that it may be pos­si­ble that the said words can be in­ter­pret­ed in such a way so as to sug­gest, in­ter alia, that the de­fen­dant will con­sid­er de­priv­ing a lit­i­gant of bail or would im­pose a cus­to­di­al sen­tence, if he is of the view that the in­di­vid­ual’s lawyer de­lib­er­ate­ly lies to the court.

“Such an in­ter­pre­ta­tion will have the ef­fect of evis­cer­at­ing the pre­sump­tion of in­no­cence and would vi­o­late the apo­d­ic­tic re­al­i­ty that cas­es can on­ly be de­ter­mined on the ba­sis of the ev­i­dence ad­duced. It is un­fath­omable that any ju­di­cial of­fi­cer may feel that he/she can ar­bi­trar­i­ly jeop­ar­dize the rights of cit­i­zens, in an at­tempt to deal with lawyers or put them in their place.”

Af­ter Seep­er­sad re­ferred the tran­scripts to the JLSC, a High Court judge was ap­point­ed to in­ves­ti­gate the al­le­ga­tion and de­ter­mine if a dis­ci­pli­nary charge was war­rant­ed.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to reach out to Dabideen for a re­sponse to the de­vel­op­ment in the case yes­ter­day evening. His broth­er an­swered his cell­phone and in­di­cat­ed that he (Dabideen) was out of the coun­try for a few days.