Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

Eliz­a­beth.gon­za­les@guardian.co.tt

The ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice in any ju­ris­dic­tion is sup­posed to be fair, im­par­tial and ac­ces­si­ble.

But for years, de­lays have raised a hard­er ques­tion: if jus­tice comes too late, who is the sys­tem re­al­ly serv­ing?

In this three-part se­ries, Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk ex­am­ines how the jus­tice sys­tem is work­ing in prac­tice, from de­lay in­side the courts to the pres­sure it cre­ates out­side them, and what that means for the peo­ple who ad­min­is­ter it and for those caught in­side it.

As time stretch­es be­hind the prison walls, the pris­on­ers housed whis­per among them­selves that Max­i­mum Sen­tence In­di­ca­tions, or MSIs, are re­peat­ed­ly raised as a way to move cas­es for­ward — get a court date and leave soon­er if they plead guilty.

It’s the op­tion that keeps com­ing up.

Some watch oth­ers take it.

Pris­on­ers who plead guilty, they claim, get dates be­fore them, move ahead faster and spend less time in­side, while those who refuse re­main wait­ing — some now weigh­ing whether to keep hold­ing out or plead guilty just for the wait to end. For for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ac­tivist Mar­vin Leza­ma, the wait stretched across years.

“Eight long, weary years,” he said in a sit-down in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk.

Leza­ma, whose ac­quit­tal on a 2012 mur­der charge last De­cem­ber, said the time he spent wait­ing to have his case heard changed how he saw the jus­tice sys­tem. Leza­ma had been charged with the killing of Stephan Haynes in the Bon Air Gar­dens, Arou­ca, in what was de­scribed as an ex­e­cu­tion-style mur­der.

“In­no­cent? It came like from days in­to weeks, weeks in­to years, years in­to decades,” he said.

He did not speak like a man rush­ing through a com­plaint. He held his gaze as he spoke.

At points he paused to think, shook his head at in­ter­vals when he spoke about the ef­fect on his chil­dren.

“The on­ly way out is to take a guilty plea, to be with your fam­i­ly and loved ones once again,” he said.

He de­scribed years on re­mand not as wait­ing in the or­di­nary sense, but as liv­ing in sus­pen­sion.

“You have a man sit­ting down 23 hours in a cell… and this man come in prison with­out tri­al,” he said.

“You break­ing down.”

Leza­ma said that over time, the is­sue is no longer on­ly the charge; it is the wait.

It is watch­ing time pass with no hear­ing date, no progress and no an­swer.

And that, he said, is where the of­fer be­gins to mat­ter.

“When a man in a cell and he crav­ing to come out… it’s a mind game,” he said.

Asked who he be­lieved the sys­tem was serv­ing, he low­ered his eyes. “The sys­tem is in­ten­tion­al­ly not to work cor­rect­ly,” he said, “so that peo­ple can ben­e­fit.”

Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk: “For which peo­ple ex­act­ly, Mr Leza­ma?”

Leza­ma: “The lawyers (will) have no work… The po­lice (will) have no work… These so-called peo­ple go to uni­ver­si­ty, the judges, the prison of­fi­cers, all of them work, crime is pay for them,” he claimed.

He con­tin­ued: “It’s eco­nom­ic, what we’re talk­ing about here. A busi­ness.”

Leza­ma was found not guilty by a Port-of-Spain ju­ry af­ter the State’s eye­wit­ness case weak­ened at tri­al.

One wit­ness claimed po­lice pres­sured him in the hos­pi­tal and de­nied the state­ment at­trib­uted to him. An­oth­er said he did not see the shoot­ing and had been told what to say.

De­fence at­tor­neys al­so point­ed to in­con­sis­ten­cies in the sus­pect’s de­scrip­tion and weak­ness­es in the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion ev­i­dence.

Of­fi­cial guid­ance from the Le­gal Aid and Ad­vi­so­ry Au­thor­i­ty web­site stat­ed MSIs are not avail­able to per­sons charged with mur­der un­less they were mi­nors at the time of the of­fence.

It de­scribed an MSI as a process in which an ac­cused asks the court to in­di­cate the like­ly max­i­mum sen­tence if he pleads guilty be­fore tri­al. It al­so open­ly pro­motes MSIs as a tool that can re­duce back­log by sav­ing the court time and re­sources that would oth­er­wise be spent on a tri­al.

The tempt­ing “of­fer”

One pris­on­er, who is charged with mur­der, said he has been wait­ing since 2018 for a court date.

“Right now, my case went up­stairs in 2018 and I’m still wait­ing for a court date,” he said, ask­ing that his name not be re­leased.

He said the op­tion of plead­ing guilty does not come up once and dis­ap­pear.

Ac­cord­ing to him, it is raised over and over while pris­on­ers are still wait­ing for a date to have their mat­ters heard.

“Peo­ple come in af­ter me and get through,” he said. “They take the MSI and they get a court date.”

He said the re­sult is that some pris­on­ers be­gin to look at the plea not through the facts of the case, but through the weight of the wait.

“Some­times in­no­cent peo­ple just take it… be­cause a man can’t win jail,” he said.

He claimed the op­tion is not just known among pris­on­ers but ac­tive­ly raised to them.

“Peo­ple from the gov­ern­ment com­ing in here of­fer­ing the MSI,” he claimed.

At an­oth­er point in the in­ter­view, he added: “The pros­e­cu­tor ap­proach the po­lice and the lawyers.”

Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk was un­able to in­de­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fy in what form the op­tion was be­ing raised to mur­der ac­cused pris­on­ers.

“Some­times, yes, I feel tempt­ed,” he said. “But I’m not go­ing down that way…I al­ready here wait­ing years. If I have to sit down here an­oth­er eight years wait­ing on a court date, I will do that.”

“I’m not plead­ing guilty for faster jus­tice. I can’t lie on my­self.”

An­oth­er pris­on­er, al­so charged with mur­der and speak­ing on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, de­scribed a sim­i­lar dy­nam­ic from a dif­fer­ent an­gle. He said he spent about three years un­til he got a court date, which he thinks is not that bad.

“It’s like about 12 dif­fer­ent ad­journ­ments be­fore it reach to this point,” he said.

He said that af­ter a while, pris­on­ers un­der­stand ex­act­ly what they are watch­ing.

“Tak­ing the MSI is a win for the sys­tem,” he said. He said the ad­journ­ments them­selves be­come part of the pres­sure. “You come out, you go back in, and noth­ing hap­pen­ing,” he said.

He said pris­on­ers do not need for­mal brief­in­gs to un­der­stand the pat­tern. “Every­body watch­ing,” he said.

Plead­ing out the back­log?

The sys­tem it­self has in­creas­ing­ly pre­sent­ed plea-based res­o­lu­tions as part of the an­swer to the back­log.

In his fi­nal law term ad­dress in Sep­tem­ber 2025, for­mer Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie cred­it­ed “plea arrange­ments” and “sen­tence in­di­ca­tions” as part of the rea­son more crim­i­nal mat­ters were be­ing re­solved with­out full tri­als. He said 73 per cent of AJI­PAA mat­ters and 62 per cent of pre-AJI­PAA mat­ters had been re­solved with­out tri­als, help­ing ease the back­log.

A sys­tem built on re­mand

The sto­ries from in­side speak of a prison sys­tem that has long car­ried a heavy re­mand pop­u­la­tion.

The World Prison Brief lists Trinidad and To­ba­go’s prison pop­u­la­tion at 3,802 in April 2021 and says 59.7 per cent of pris­on­ers were on re­mand in 2018.

More re­cent­ly, re­port­ing in Au­gust 2025 on state­ments by the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion said near­ly two-thirds of the prison pop­u­la­tion was on re­mand, while No­vem­ber 2025 re­port­ing put the to­tal prison pop­u­la­tion at about 3,300.

The cost has been a pub­lic is­sue for years.

In 2016, then At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi said it cost the State al­most $50 mil­lion a month to main­tain 2,235 re­mand pris­on­ers.

He al­so said 11 per cent of re­mand pris­on­ers had been wait­ing more than 10 years, with an­oth­er 11 per cent wait­ing be­tween five and 10 years.

The long waits are not iso­lat­ed.

In June 2025, there was a re­port on a mur­der ac­cused who had been wait­ing 14 and a half years for the tri­al to be­gin. In Jan­u­ary 2026, in an­oth­er re­port, a man who spent more than 14 years on re­mand for a mur­der charge was even­tu­al­ly dis­missed.