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Wednesday, June 11, 2025

Judge blasts Hinds for attack on Judiciary

'I do not have friends who are criminals'

by

Derek Achong
762 days ago
20230510
High Court Judge  Devindra Rampersad

High Court Judge Devindra Rampersad

“I do not have friends who are crim­i­nals.”

These were the words used by High Court Judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad yes­ter­day, as he re­spond­ed to com­ments made by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, in re­la­tion to his (Ram­per­sad’s) judg­ment in a con­tro­ver­sial law­suit brought by firearms deal­er Brent Thomas.

In a tele­vised state­ment deal­ing with the case last Mon­day, Hinds re­port­ed­ly stat­ed that “crim­i­nals have friends every­where in this coun­try. They have them in the Po­lice Ser­vice, they have them in the Cus­toms, in the Im­mi­gra­tion, in the De­fence Force, they have them in the Ju­di­cia­ry, they have them in Par­lia­ment.”

Ad­dress­ing at­tor­neys in the case at a hear­ing at the Wa­ter­front Ju­di­cial Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, called to de­cide on a time­line for sub­mis­sions on the com­pen­sa­tion that should be paid to Thomas, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad de­nied any ex­ter­nal in­ter­fer­ence in the de­ter­mi­na­tion of Thomas’ case, which is cur­rent­ly be­ing ap­pealed by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice.

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad said: “I do not know Brent Thomas, nor did I know of Brent Thomas be­fore this case, nor do I know any of his friends or fam­i­ly or ac­quain­tances.”

He added, “No one has lob­bied me with re­spect to this case. No one has reached out to me about this case, nor has any­one sought to in­flu­ence me in any way.”

Deal­ing specif­i­cal­ly with Hinds’ state­ment, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad de­scribed it as “rather un­for­tu­nate,” es­pe­cial­ly as it came from an at­tor­ney with sig­nif­i­cant ex­pe­ri­ence such as Hinds. He not­ed that it did not on­ly af­fect him, but all the 112 ju­di­cial of­fi­cers who are part of the Ju­di­cia­ry.

While he ad­mit­ted the Ju­di­cia­ry and, by ex­ten­sion, ju­di­cial of­fi­cers are not im­mune from le­git­i­mate crit­i­cism, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad said: “When one of its own of­fi­cers, in the con­text of dis­cussing a case be­fore the court, a case which is not yet even com­plet­ed be­fore the court, says to the na­tion that “crim­i­nals have friends in the Ju­di­cia­ry,” the ob­vi­ous in­ten­tion is to more than just crit­i­cise the Ju­di­cia­ry but to go fur­ther to sug­gest that, in some way, il­le­gal­i­ty is in­flu­enc­ing the de­ci­sions of these judges, mas­ters, and mag­is­trates, there­by jeop­ar­dis­ing the Ju­di­cia­ry as a whole.”

He added, “When viewed in the con­text of this case be­fore this court, this state­ment and the in­nu­en­do is very damn­ing. A state­ment and in­nu­en­do which this court can as­sure the na­tion is ab­solute­ly and to­tal­ly wrong.”

Deny­ing he was be­ing over­ly sen­si­tive on the is­sue, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad said judges can­not sit idle while there was a cloud of il­le­gal­i­ty and crim­i­nal­i­ty hang­ing over the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice.

“One has to, there­fore, be very care­ful mak­ing state­ments which may seem in­nocu­ous at first, but which car­ry a po­tent and dam­ag­ing ef­fect. Worse yet, if those state­ments are made with­out re­morse,” he said.

He said the state of af­fairs may give youths the mis­guid­ed view there are no sanc­tions or con­se­quences for mak­ing state­ments with­out re­gard to the truth.

“And that is a se­ri­ous threat to our so­ci­ety and is a grave source of dis­il­lu­sion­ment to right-think­ing mem­bers of so­ci­ety. But, iron­i­cal­ly, it is a source of com­fort to the very crim­i­nal­i­ty that so many in so­ci­ety de­cry,” he said.

While Jus­tice Ram­per­sad not­ed that in the past he would re­fer at­tor­neys to the Dis­ci­pli­nary Com­mit­tee of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion for sim­i­lar con­duct, he said he could not do so in this case, as Hinds was not a par­ty in the case and did not par­tic­i­pate in it.

He al­so said while he in­vit­ed Hinds to the hear­ing to clar­i­fy his state­ments, he (Hinds) ex­er­cised his choice not to at­tend.

“I mean him no ill will, nor do I mean him any dis­com­fort, notwith­stand­ing the fact that the feel­ing may not have been rec­i­p­ro­cat­ed,” he said.

“I sought clar­i­ty and have not re­ceived it. The cloud still ex­ists.”

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Law As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Lynette See­baran-Suite in­di­cat­ed that the as­so­ci­a­tion had al­ready is­sued a re­lease crit­i­cis­ing Hinds’ state­ment and was still con­sid­er­ing po­ten­tial fur­ther ac­tion.

In his ad­dress to the court, Fyard Ho­sein, SC, who is lead­ing Thomas’ le­gal team, echoed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments as Jus­tice Ram­per­sad over the po­ten­tial ef­fect of Hinds’ state­ment.

“We should low­er the tem­per­a­ture on the pub­lic de­bate be­cause pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions are los­ing pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence,” he said.

He not­ed that the con­cerns raised were not a per­son­al at­tack on Hinds, who he de­scribed as an old friend and for­mer client.

The par­ties even­tu­al­ly agreed to hold dis­cus­sions over fil­ing sub­mis­sions and ex­pert ev­i­dence to as­sist Jus­tice Ram­per­sad in as­sess­ing the com­pen­sa­tion for Thomas.

They are ex­pect­ed to pro­vide Jus­tice Ram­per­sad with a time­line by June 7, with him de­cid­ing whether it is ac­cept­able one week lat­er.

Thomas was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by De­vesh Ma­haraj, Sasha Bridge­mo­hans­ingh and Cheyenne Lu­go. The AG’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Gilbert Pe­ter­son, SC, Vanes­sa Gopaul, Svet­lana Dass, Michelle Ben­jamin, Lianne Thomas and Adana Hosang.

The as­so­ci­a­tion was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Aaron Ma­habir and Kavi­ta Roop-Boodoo.


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