Almost 50 LL.B graduates have signaled their interest to join a programme aimed at recruiting them for training as prosecutors in the magistracy, Attorney General (AG) and Minister of Legal Affairs Anil Nandlall has said.
Prior to his presentation on the initiative during the budget debate last Friday, Nandlall had said that the initiative would transform the quality of representation that victims of crimes and the state receive in the magistracy.
However, APNU+AFC shadow minister Roysdale Forde SC rubbished the plan, calling it a “knee jerk reaction” to a problem by the government.
Forde said that what such students want are scholarships to complete their professional qualifications to attain their Legal Education Certificates (LECs) to be admitted to practice.
“The solution requires and lies in development of human capital, which the Attorney General is obviously averse to,” Forde said.
Forde, in his maiden presentation to the House, opined that the AG’s proposal is frightening, since the skill to practice does not come after the LLB, but rather after Law School. Against this background he said it is unfair to thrust untrained graduates into prosecutorial work, much as it was always to thrust policemen into prosecutorial work.
Forde told the Speaker that what is needed is a Criminal Prosecutions Service, under the direction and control of the Director of Public Prosecutions.
“The proposal by the Attorney General is yet another ill thought out idea,” he said.
Nandlall previously announced the plan to the press, while noting that with some exceptions, since independence all criminal offences being tried in the Magistrates’ Courts have been invariably prosecuted by police ranks, who undergo certain limited training in the area of prosecution. He further observed that despite their limited training and lack of legal education, they have acquitted themselves reasonably well against the most formidable of defence counsel. At the same time, he said no one can dispute that because of the appreciable inequality, there have been multiple miscarriages of justice, simply because of defence counsel’s superior knowledge and training in the law. As a result, he contended that the victims of crime, the state and the public interest have suffered decades of grievous injustice.
“It is the state’s duty, though belated, to address this deficiency if true justice is to be achieved in our criminal justice system,” Nandlall said as he explained his plan.
Nandlall argued that these recruits would improve the quality of prosecutions in the Magistrates’ Courts, while at the same time providing a job and career opportunity for many of graduates of law who are currently unemployed.
