On Fri­day (Ju­ly 24), the As­sem­bly of South­ern Lawyers ho­n­oured at­tor­ney Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, who is en­ter­ing his 60th year in le­gal prac­tice, at its an­nu­al end-of-term lun­cheon. 

Fol­low­ing is an abridged ver­sion of a speech cel­e­brat­ing Ma­haraj de­liv­ered by Is­rael B Khan, SC, at the event.

It is be­yond all rea­son­able doubt that Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, has earned the en­vi­ous dis­tinc­tion of be­ing brand­ed the great­est crim­i­nal ad­vo­cate ever to emerge in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Many of his con­tem­po­raries in the le­gal pro­fes­sion be­lieve he is sim­ply the great­est ad­vo­cate, in that he mas­tered both the crim­i­nal and civ­il branch­es of law in his prac­tice. Be that as it may, I dare say his sta­tus as such will nev­er be sur­passed by present or fu­ture at­tor­neys in this coun­try.

From his ear­ly years in his prac­tice, Ramesh rep­re­sent­ed his clients to the best of his abil­i­ty, force­ful­ly and fair­ly. He would fight hard for his clients, which in­clud­ed crit­i­cis­ing pre­sid­ing judges.

In a small ju­ris­dic­tion such as T&T, this pro­fes­sion­al per­sona was well known amongst judges, fel­low col­leagues and the gen­er­al pub­lic. But Ramesh, at age 30 and with less than ten years at the Bar, was no ex­tra­or­di­nary, bril­liant or po­ten­tial­ly great at­tor­ney when he ap­peared in a civ­il mat­ter on April 17, 1975, in a mun­dane civ­il pro­ceed­ing in which he was sen­tenced to sev­en days’ sim­ple im­pris­on­ment for con­tempt of court.

And it was this fight to re­move that con­vic­tion and sen­tence that cat­a­pult­ed him in the Caribbean ju­ris­dic­tions and pos­si­bly the en­tire Eng­lish Com­mon­wealth ju­ris­dic­tions as a po­ten­tial­ly great ad­vo­cate. 

Con­tempt of court

Thus, on April 17, 1975, Ramesh be­came the first bar­ris­ter in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world since 1607 to be im­pris­oned for con­tempt of court for “some­thing” he said to the pre­sid­ing judge while ar­gu­ing his case.

He had re­quest­ed that pre­sid­ing judge, Jus­tice Son­ny Gu­lab Ma­haraj, dis­qual­i­fy him­self from all cas­es in which he was coun­sel on the ground of un­ju­di­cial con­duct by the said judge in his mat­ters.

The judge had re­fused ap­pli­ca­tions for ad­journ­ments made by at­tor­neys hold­ing for Ramesh, in or­der to ac­com­mo­date him rep­re­sent­ing his clients. He dis­missed the cas­es.

On April 17, in his ap­pli­ca­tion for the judge to step down from pre­sid­ing over his cas­es, Jus­tice Ma­haraj asked Ramesh if he was say­ing the court was bi­ased against him and Ramesh’s re­ply was, “… this is not the right place to an­swer that ques­tion but I say to you that you are guilty of un­ju­di­cial con­duct.”

Jus­tice Ma­haraj then prompt­ly charged Ramesh with con­tempt of court and sen­tenced him to sev­en days’ sim­ple im­pris­on­ment. 

Ramesh ap­pealed his con­vic­tion and sen­tence all the way to the Privy Coun­cil. He won. 

The en­tire im­broglio of the con­tempt charge, his sen­tence and his right­ful vin­di­ca­tion by the Privy Coun­cil is doc­u­ment­ed in his book Bar­ris­ter Be­hind Bars. I urge every young at­tor­ney to read this book. 

This vic­to­ry cat­a­pult­ed him in­to the Caribbean re­gion as an in­de­fati­ga­ble fight­er, not on­ly for his per­son­al lib­er­ty but the right to a fair tri­al for all ac­cused per­sons whom he rep­re­sent­ed be­fore the var­i­ous courts in T&T. He was carv­ing out his ca­reer as the best crim­i­nal de­fence ad­vo­cate in the coun­try, if not the en­tire Caribbean. He kept on win­ning cas­es at the Mag­is­trates’ Courts through­out the coun­try and the As­sizes Courts in San Fer­nan­do, Port-of-Spain and the Court of Ap­peal. He was un­stop­pable in his quest for jus­tice for all. 

This caused an un­scrupu­lous group of po­lice, head­ed by a cer­tain high-rank­ing of­fi­cer, one Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Her­bert Williams (now de­ceased), to hatch a di­a­bol­i­cal plot to bring Ramesh to his knees. He was win­ning too many cas­es in­sti­tut­ed by the po­lice. He was false­ly charged, to­geth­er with at­tor­ney Mo­han Sagar, for per­vert­ing the course of pub­lic jus­tice. He won that case but a few years lat­er was again charged with the very se­ri­ous crim­i­nal of­fence of con­spir­a­cy to mur­der.

A to­tal­ly false charge with a con­vict­ed repro­bate as the wit­ness against him. He again won in the court. And in­ci­den­tal­ly, po­et­ic jus­tice caught up with Her­bert Williams in that a few years af­ter the false cas­es were dis­missed against Ramesh, he (Williams) was con­vict­ed for un­law­ful killing (manslaugh­ter) by shoot­ing a cit­i­zen to death and was sen­tenced to sev­en years hard labour im­pris­on­ment. 

With­in a few years of his vin­di­ca­tion on the con­tempt charge by the Privy Coun­cil, “Ramesh” was a house­hold name through­out the Eng­lish Com­mon­wealth ju­ris­dic­tions.

He was the first ad­vo­cate at­tor­ney to raise im­por­tant con­sti­tu­tion­al is­sues as part of the de­fence in crim­i­nal mat­ters: and very of­ten filed col­lat­er­al con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tions on such mat­ters and won. These vic­to­ries im­pact­ed on the de­fence of ac­cused per­sons at the Crim­i­nal As­size Courts. 

Ramesh’s skills as a crim­i­nal ad­vo­cate were sim­ply fan­tas­tic. The use of his voice, his metic­u­lous cross-ex­am­i­na­tion of wit­ness­es, ad­dress to ju­rors and the gen­er­al modus operan­di of his ad­vo­ca­cy were mes­meris­ing.

Stu­dents from Hugh Wood­ing Law School, young lawyers, po­lice of­fi­cers and mem­bers of the pub­lic would pack the As­size Court when Ramesh was the ad­vo­cate at­tor­ney for the ac­cused.

I my­self, as a young lawyer, was an avid ad­mir­er of this great crim­i­nal de­fence at­tor­ney and took every op­por­tu­ni­ty to at­tend his tri­als in or­der to learn the skills he would dis­play. 

It was a learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence to wit­ness his body lan­guage in a court of law: how he en­tered the court room, talked, looked, moved, ges­tured, sat and stood, his fa­cial ex­pres­sions and the use of his voice as he made le­gal sub­mis­sions. All his ac­tions in court demon­strat­ed pro­fes­sion­al­ism, man­ners, dig­ni­ty and con­fi­dence. He was al­ways cor­dial and pleas­ant with his col­leagues and very ac­com­mo­dat­ing with le­gal ad­vice to young at­tor­neys. 

With his style of ad­vo­ca­cy, Ramesh brought re­spect and ad­mi­ra­tion for crim­i­nal law ad­vo­cates in T&T. 

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, crim­i­nal law ad­vo­cates were the stepchil­dren of the le­gal pro­fes­sion. We were scorned by our col­leagues who were prac­ti­tion­ers at the Civ­il Bar.

Ramesh gave us the courage and strength to stand our ground as flam­boy­ant ad­vo­cates, so much so that law stu­dents were ad­vised to study the art and modus operan­di of cross-ex­am­i­na­tion by crim­i­nal law ad­vo­cates and not the civ­il lawyers be­cause, by our prac­tice, we had mas­tered the fine art of cross-ex­am­i­na­tion. 

I haz­ard a guess that Ramesh, at this present time of his ca­reer, must have de­fend­ed over four to 500 ac­cused charged for mur­der and his vic­to­ries can be safe­ly put at 90 to 95 per cent. 

And based on his mer­it, abil­i­ty and in­tegri­ty, Ramesh ac­quired un­prece­dent­ed wealth as an at­tor­ney in rep­re­sent­ing clients charged with crim­i­nal of­fences, but he gave back to the so­ci­ety and im­pov­er­ished per­sons charged with se­ri­ous crim­i­nal of­fences via his hu­man rights or­gan­i­sa­tion. He rep­re­sent­ed hun­dreds of im­pov­er­ished per­sons pro bono, thus for­go­ing mil­lions of dol­lars. He is a true and ded­i­cat­ed ad­vo­cate at the Crim­i­nal Bar and I salute him. 

Stint as AG

Ramesh had a short stint in the na­tion­al pol­i­tics of the coun­try. He was ap­point­ed at­tor­ney gen­er­al by Bas­deo Pan­day in 1996. In his ca­pac­i­ty as AG, he in­formed Pan­day that there was mas­sive cor­rup­tion in the con­struc­tion of the new Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. He was re­buffed by Pandy with the ques­tion: “Where is the ev­i­dence of cor­rup­tion?”

AG Ramesh hired an ex­pert fraud in­ves­ti­ga­tor, one Bob Lindquist, to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter and ob­tain the ev­i­dence, if any. Ramesh took the ev­i­dence to Prime Min­is­ter Pan­day and he, in turn, re­moved Ramesh from his cab­i­net. 

Ramesh, to­geth­er with oth­er min­is­ters, then brought the en­tire gov­ern­ment of Pan­day in­to dis­re­pute. Pan­day would lose the next Gen­er­al Elec­tion and there­after nev­er re­turned to gov­ern­ment. You sim­ply do not re­buff an at­tor­ney gen­er­al like Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj with “where is the ev­i­dence” when he com­plains to a prime min­is­ter of cor­rup­tion in his gov­ern­ment. 

Fast for­ward to his lat­est na­tion­al vic­to­ry at the Privy Coun­cil. The vic­to­ri­ous Jus­tice Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar judg­ment in­fer­en­tial­ly in­di­cat­ed that Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie lied on oath, and thus com­mit­ted per­jury when he swore he nev­er forced Ay­ers-Cae­sar to re­sign, nor trick her in­to re­sign­ing her po­si­tion as High Court Judge etc. He com­mit­ted the crim­i­nal of­fence of mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice, which car­ries a term of im­pris­on­ment usu­al­ly up to 15 years with hard labour. 

Three days af­ter that Privy Coun­cil judg­ment, I protest­ed on the Hall of Jus­tice steps with a plac­ard call­ing on Archie to re­sign im­me­di­ate­ly. CJ Archie re­fused to re­sign then. 

Ramesh gave an in­ter­view via the print­ed me­dia. He ex­plained the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of the Ay­ers-Cae­sar mat­ter and stat­ed that he could not com­pre­hend how Archie could re­main as CJ af­ter the judg­ment. 

A few months af­ter Ramesh’s com­ments, CJ Archie stunned the en­tire na­tion by re­sign­ing. 

It is my un­der­stand­ing that the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate was about to trig­ger a Sec­tion 137 tri­bunal in or­der to as­cer­tain whether, on ac­count of the Ay­ers-Cae­sar mat­ter, Archie should have been re­moved as chief jus­tice of T&T. 

You sim­ply do not toy with the great Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj SC. Ask Bas­deo Pan­day and Ivor Archie. 

On be­half of the Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion and my good­self, I salute and toast the dis­tin­guished and the great­est crim­i­nal at­tor­ney, Ramesh Lawrence of Ara­bia Ma­haraj SC, ever to emerge in T&T “who is en­ter­ing his 60th year in le­gal prac­tice; a mile­stone as it is re­mark­able, and tes­ta­ment to the life­time of ded­i­ca­tion to the law and to the le­gal pro­fes­sion in T&T.”