Privy Council decisions set prisoners free

Bhola and Wiggins were charged in June, 1995 for demanding money with menaces. In October 2001, they were sentenced to six years in jail. Their appeal to the Court of Appeal was heard in December, 2002 and turned down. On that day, Justices Roger Hamel-Smith, Anthony Lucky, and Wendell Kangaloo ordered that Bhola and Wiggins begin serving their six-year sentences from then. And now, last Tuesday, their case was heard by the Privy Council, which turned down the appeal but ordered that the sentences start from the day of conviction in 2001. This meant that Bhola and Wiggins had already served their time and had, indeed, gone over it.

The Law Lords did not give any reason in their written judgment for changing the time of commencement, but perhaps they felt they didn’t need to. Bhola and Wiggins were, presumably, jailed on the date of their conviction so, if anything needs explaining, it is why the Court of Appeal judges decided that the former police officers’ sentences should start from the date their appeal was rejected. After all, that appeal was heard over a year from the time they were found guilty.

Indeed, the time-frame of this case represents all too well the typical state of the legal process in Trinidad and Tobago. Bhola’s and Wiggins’s case took six years to reach the courts after they were first tried, and five years after that to reach the Privy Council. This is clearly not good enough, for justice that moves slowly is itself an injustice. Not only this, but the slow pace of justice is also a factor behind the spiralling crime rate. It is also noteworthy that Seeromani Maraj Naraynsingh, who was recently freed of conspiracy to murder in the Chandra Naraynsingh affair, was successfully able to sue the Director of Public Prosecutions to get him to set the trial process in motion within a reasonable time-frame. But the majority of persons awaiting trial do not have Ms Maraj Naraynsingh’s resources.

Both the judiciary and the government have been taking various initiatives over past years to streamline the administration of justice. These have borne some fruit, but there is still a long way to go. And, even if matters do improve, this is only the first step in building confidence in the judiciary, which is a crucial element in the preservation of law and order. According to a poll done last year by Market Opinion and Research International (MORI), judges are among the six most trusted professions, enjoying the confidence of over 60 percent of the populace. But, if this is to be maintained and improved, the judiciary must do some cogent self-analysis.

A useful exercise, for example, would be a statistical analysis of judges’ decisions which were reversed by the Court of Appeal and the Privy Council, in order to see if any particular judges are above-average in wrong judgments. Another useful indicator would be a media survey to see if the names of particular magistrates and judges appear in the press more often than others because their decisions are controversial to the public mind.

Such measures are necessary in order to ensure that judicial standards do not slip, even as administrative improvements begin to take hold. Without this bulwark, the society will find it that much more difficult to turn the tide against crime.