Faris: PIs unjust for rape victims

He was replying to concerns raised recently by Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Roger Gaspard, SC, and Head of the Criminal Bar Association Pamela Elder, SC, about Government’s legislation to abolish preliminary inquiries.

Gaspard feared of creating a bottleneck at the High Court while Elder said the move is bad law and lacked consultation.

Al-Rawi considered the case of a girl assaulted as a minor where a PI might drag on for ten years. “Should that child be required to re-live that experience every time the matter is called?” he mulled.

“The manoeuvre to abolish the PI is very significant because it is an indignity for the judicial system to have a PI take 14 or 17 years, where people are incarcerated and where victims and witnesses must traipse up and down with many adjournments.” While appreciating Gaspard’s concerns that cutting the PI process will create a logjam at the High Court, the AG vowed to avert such by a raft of measures.

He promised more judges, more courts and more prosecutors, plus a public defender system.

Al-Rawi said this will be a “very coordinated and deliberate development”, even as he respects the rights of all in this democracy.

He expressed his high regard for Elder’s commitment to finding legal solutions, but he begged to differ on the PI issue.

Saying TT’s history is littered with unfulfilled recommendations on improving criminal justice, Al-Rawi said the PI issue has been on the agenda for many years, and he now has a job to do.

Noting Elder’s remark that the PI is a good training ground for young lawyers to cut their teeth, he said, “I’m not minded to support training grounds at the expense of the rights of victims or accused. Respectfully I beg to differ with Mrs Elder. Trinidad and Tobago hired the Government to do a job and find prescriptions for issues like crime.” He lamented that the gap between allegation and conviction is as wide as 20 years. “So the criminal justice system has resulted in runaway crime, as people feel no consequences.” He also lamented the $40 million spent annually on witness protection while all these court cases are bogged down in PI.

He vowed to tackle analysis paralysis over the PI issue.

Al-Rawi espoused the abolition of PI by saying the fears of the legal professions regarding other initiatives had never come to pass.

He cited an initial outcry in the UK over the Police And Criminal Evidence (PACE) Act 1984, but said, “Today everybody celebrates PACE”. Likewise, he said in TT, initial concerns over new Civil Proceedings Rules proved unfounded, and civil cases are today concluded within one or two years. “So we are quite comfortable taking proportionate steps,” he concluded