Ramdeen, Prakash hit judge-alone Bill

He spoke at a news briefing at the Opposition Leader’s Office in Port-of-Spain, also attended by St Augustine MP Prakash Ramadhar and Naparima MP Rodney Charles.

The Trial by Judge Alone Bill amends the Offences Against the Person (OAP) Act and the Criminal Procedure Act. However, Ramdeen yesterday stuck to his senatorial guns to insist that the law courts had hit the OAP Act’s Section 4(A) (6) as unconstitutional and had completely struck down Section 4(A)(7). “You can’t bring legislation to Parliament that the court has struck down,” he said. (The cases were Gilbert Evelyn, 2007 and Mukesh Maharaj, 2009).

While welcoming Attorney General (AG) Faris Al Rawi’s reported statement that the OAP Act should have been amended to omit the sections rejected by the court, Ramdeen said the AG erred to say the Law Revision Commission should make these changes, as Ramdeen said this is done only by Parliament at the AG’s request.

Saying 1,000 inmates are on murder charges, he said the current disposal rate of 19 capital trials a year means it will take 50 years to try all capital charge inmates, as such cases are excluded from the new Bill on preliminary inquiries. Ramdeen also accused the Government of jumping on the bandwagon in signalling support for hanging, in contrast with the former opposition PNM’s rejection of the former PP government’s Bill on hanging.

He alleged that the removal of preliminary inquiry, trial by jury and magistrates, and addition of plea-bargaining could “create a track for agouti to run,” benefitting the Government’s friends.

Ramadhar asked if it is the AG’s intent to fully remove jury trial in place of judge trial, saying the former is a guarantor of the rights of the “small man,” while the latter can act to protect the interest of elites.

Recalling the AG saying the Bill expands an accused’s choice to opt for either jury or judge trial, Ramadhar wondered if this was merely pretty language used to disguise an intent to abolish jury trial.

Charles said while the Opposition is okay with replacing a pre-trial process with a paper committal, its concern is that vesting the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) with a magistrate’s power – to determine if to go to trial or not __ may violate the idea of separation of powers and so be open to a legal challenge.

He also wondered how to improve the detection rate, and how to have speedier trials by having more judges and more courts.