(Trinidad Express) A judge in Trinidad and Tobago can only be removed from office in accordance with the special procedure set out in Section 137 of the Constitution.
This mandates that any question for the removal of a judge from the Supreme Court must first be investigated by a Special Tribunal appointed by the President.
This was the explanation yesterday from Senior Counsel Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj during a media conference held at the Kapok Hotel in St Clair, to explain the importance and impact of last week’s judgment given by the Court of Appeal in Civil Appeal (S241 of 2021) involving former chief magistrate Marcia Ayers-Caesar.
Earlier this month Ayers-Caesar emerged victorious in her legal battle against the Judicial and Legal Service Commission (JLSC) headed by Chief Justice Ivor Archie which she said forced her out of office as a High Court judge in 2017.
A three-judge panel at the Appeal Court held that High Court Justice David Harris got it wrong when he ruled in October 2021 that Ayers-Caesar was not “forced” or “pressured” into resigning from the position by the Chief Justice as was claimed.
Justice Harris had found that based on the evidence presented during the trial, Ayers-Caesar had made the decision on her own to submit the resignation letter to then-President Anthony Carmona with the intention of returning to the Magistracy to complete 52 part-heard preliminary enquiries she had left behind upon her appointment to the High Court Bench.
In their ruling, however, Justices of Appeal Allan Mendonca, Alice Yorke-Soo Hon and Nolan Bereaux unanimously held that Ayers-Caesar’s appeal had to be upheld.
The panel also agreed to grant a stay of 21 days of their order to give the JLSC time to consider whether it wanted to further appeal the matter to the London-based Privy Council.
Yesterday, Maharaj recounted the facts of the case and the rulings of the appellate judges.
He explained that once Section 137 of the Constitution had been initialised and a tribunal appointed, if the tribunal determined that a judge ought to be removed from office, the question of the removal of the judge is then referred to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
“The judge can only be removed from office if the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council decides that the judge should be removed from office,” Maharaj explained.
He added, “The purpose of insulating a judge by having this special procedure to remove a judge is to permit judges to be fearless in the discharge of their duties and not to be worried that they can be at the whims and fancies of officials of government or officials of the Judiciary to have them removed from office if they do not carry out certain instructions or if they are not subservient or sycophantic to requests made of them.
“Judges therefore are not required to be under the thumb of anyone even any thumb from the Judicial arm of the State or under the thumb of any Chief Justice or the Judicial and Legal Service Commission. Judicial independence is therefore a critical component of the concept of the Rule of Law.
“The Court of Appeal in the judgment it delivered in the Marcia Ayers-Caesar appeal a few days ago gave a judgment which upheld the independence of the Judiciary, the security of tenure of judges, the existence of the Rule of Law in Trinidad and Tobago and no one is above the law. The law is supreme.”
He said in this case, background evidence demonstrated the seriousness of the violation by the JLSC of the principle of the independence of the Judiciary.
He also applauded the strong language used in the rulings of the appellate judges.
“The judges of the Court of Appeal were justified in using very strong language and I think the people of T&T should be proud of the Court of Appeal decision,” Maharaj said.
He noted that while up to yesterday, he had not been given notice that the State will appeal the decision, he believed that having it heard before the Privy Council may be very good for the country and the Caribbean as a whole.
The Court of Appeal, in its ruling, also proceeded to make a number of declarations including that the decision of the JLSC was ultra vires, null and void and amounted to illegal conduct.
This was so, the judges held, because the Commission sought to threaten and pressure her into resigning contrary to its powers under section 137 of the Constitution.
Given the findings, the judges said Ayers-Caesar continued to hold the position of Puisne judge of the High Court and ordered that she be compensated for breaches to her Constitutional rights.
The compensation to be awarded is to be assessed by the High Court at a later date.
Justice Mendonca, who announced the court’s findings, also directed that the purported resignation letter that was issued to Carmona by Ayers-Caesar in April 2017, be expunged from the President’s records.
Ayers-Caesar was appointed to the High Court Bench on April 12, 2017, but claimed that just two weeks later she was “forced and coerced” into resigning from the position following public uproar over the 52 incomplete part-heard matters she had left behind.
Some of those matters had to be started afresh, even though some of those charged had already spent significant amounts of time behind prison walls awaiting the completion of their matters.
She was represented by Maharaj and Ronnie Bissessar, SC, while Senior Counsel Russell Martineau, Deborah Peake, Ian Benjamin and Ian Roach appeared for the JLSC.
