Lawyers put system on trial

DEPUTY DPP Carla Brown Antoine and attorney Pamela Elder yesterday agreed to the law that states a magistrate had no jurisdiction to rule on and to object to Public Interest Immunity, but both attorneys had different interpretations of the law.

For over an hour, Brown Antoine and Elder presented arguments before Chief Magistrate Sherman McNicolls at the Port-of-Spain Magistrates’ Eighth Court during the preliminary inquiry of the conspiracy to murder charge laid against Jamaat Al Muslimeen leader, Imam Yasin Abu Bakr. Bakr is being represented by Elder and Brown Antoine is prosecuting. Elder’s cross-examination of State witness, Cpl Veronique had been censored on the two occasions that he had given evidence because certain aspects of his evidence was part of an ongoing police investigation. Elder had since made an application to conduct a complete cross-examination of Veronique, to which Brown Antoine had objected.

According to Elder, the magistrate would be out of his jurisdiction if he ruled in favour of Brown Antoine’s objection because the law stated that only a judge could rule on objections to Public Interest Immunity. “Your Worship has no jurisdiction on the ruling of the Public Interest Immunity,” she said to McNicolls. To Brown Antoine, she said, “Wave a Public Interest Immunity as a shield to protect your documents, but you cannot use it as a sword to prevent me from cross-examination.”  Brent Miller, she said, was an accomplice witness and it was necessary for the prosecution to disclose “all his forms of misconduct” in case the matter was committed to the High Court and Miller, for some reason, was not around. She said the issue of his credibility as a witness was also a major concern.

Brown Antoine, however, disagreed.  She argued that Public Interest Immunity applied to documents, as well as to what witnesses said during cross-examination. Among her reasons for her objection to the cross-examination was a magistrate’s inability to rule on Public Interest Immunity. She accused the defence attorney of attempting to get information from Veronique, that she was unable to get from Brent Miller during cross-examination. With reference to Miller’s credibility as a witness, Brown Antoine said, he was “not an accused, he was a witness” and the allegations of offences committed by him for which he had not been charged was just “heresy.”

McNicolls eventual admittance that he could not rule on the issue prompted Elder to ask “Does your cannot rule mean that I cannot cross-examine or that I can go ahead because you cannot rule?” At that point, Brown Antoine immediately stood and said, “There is an objection before the court and the court has ruled that you cannot rule on the objection.” The magistrate then instructed the attorneys to make further submissions on the matter at a later date.