Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A High Court Judge has re­fused to al­low the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to with­hold the iden­ti­ties of its lawyers in a civ­il law­suit brought by a po­lice of­fi­cer on re­mand for mur­der.

In a re­cent de­ci­sion, High Court Judge Vigel Paul re­fused the re­quest made by the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al in a case brought by PC Ja­son Bee­tam, who is chal­leng­ing a de­ci­sion to charge him for am­mu­ni­tion pos­ses­sion un­der the Firearms Act af­ter he was ar­rest­ed un­der Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions (EPR) dur­ing a pre­vi­ous State of Emer­gency (SoE).

The re­quest was made in Ju­ly in a “pri­vate and con­fi­den­tial” let­ter sent to Jus­tice Paul.

Jus­tice Paul was asked to al­low State at­tor­neys to leave their names off of court fil­ings and to al­low them to par­tic­i­pate in vir­tu­al hear­ings with­out ap­pear­ing on screen or iden­ti­fy­ing them­selves by name.

The So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al claimed that sim­i­lar re­quests had been made in cas­es in­volv­ing high-pro­file lit­i­gants con­vict­ed of or charged with se­ri­ous of­fences in­clud­ing gang charges.

The re­quest was lim­it­ed to at­tor­neys as­signed to the Civ­il Law De­part­ment of the AG’s Of­fice and not to pri­vate at­tor­neys re­tained to rep­re­sent the AG’s Of­fice in lit­i­ga­tion.

In re­fus­ing the re­quest, Jus­tice Paul not­ed that such anonymi­ty is on­ly usu­al­ly per­mit­ted to pro­tect vul­ner­a­ble wit­ness­es or the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice it­self.

“I have not been sup­plied with any au­thor­i­ty show­ing that the ex­cep­tion is ap­plic­a­ble to le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tives...Their iden­ti­ty is part and par­cel of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty,” Jus­tice Paul said.

He not­ed that such a prac­tice would pre­vent lit­i­gants from rais­ing le­git­i­mate con­cerns over mis­con­duct if such aris­es.

“The recog­nised gate­ways (where open jus­tice would frus­trate the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice, and pro­tec­tion of the le­git­i­mate pri­vate-life in­ter­ests of par­ties or wit­ness­es) do not nat­u­ral­ly reach salaried State at­tor­neys dis­charg­ing a pub­lic func­tion,” he said.

Jus­tice Paul al­so ques­tioned the method used to make the re­quest with­out the in­volve­ment of Bee­tam’s lawyer Keron Ramkhal­whan.

“A de­par­ture from open jus­tice should be sought by a for­mal, in­ter partes ap­pli­ca­tion sup­port­ed by af­fi­davit ev­i­dence, with the claimant able to be heard, and dis­posed of by rea­soned rul­ing,” Jus­tice Paul said.

Jus­tice Paul al­so not­ed that he was not re­quired to rub­ber-stamp the re­quest based on the fact that it had been grant­ed by oth­er judges in un­re­lat­ed cas­es.

“Each ap­pli­ca­tion stands on its own ev­i­dence, and re­liance on un­re­port­ed, first-in­stance anonymi­ty prac­tice is pre­cise­ly what the au­thor­i­ties cau­tion against,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, SC, to find out whether his of­fice planned to make a for­mal ap­pli­ca­tion based on the pre­lim­i­nary rul­ing or to ap­peal the de­ci­sion for the Court of Ap­peal to weigh in.

How­ev­er, Je­re­mie did not re­spond to mes­sages sent via What­sApp.

Ac­cord­ing to his court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, in ear­ly No­vem­ber last year, Bee­tam, of Tem­ple Street, Beau­car­ro Road, Freeport, was ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of live­stock farmer Vish­nu Lal­la.

Lal­la, 63, of Cou­va, was ab­duct­ed while tend­ing to his an­i­mals near his home on No­vem­ber 8 last year.

Lal­la’s ve­hi­cle was seen speed­ing away from the area and lat­er that day a rel­a­tive re­ceived a $100,000 ran­som de­mand for his re­lease.

The burnt shell of Lal­la’s ve­hi­cle was found in Es­per­an­za.

Lal­la’s body was found in a for­est area off Brechin Cas­tle Road in Cou­va the fol­low­ing day.

A post-mortem re­vealed that he died of a gun­shot wound.

Bee­tam’s lawyers not­ed that their client was ar­rest­ed un­der the pro­vi­sions of the reg­u­la­tions and such was utilised to ex­tend his de­ten­tion be­fore be­ing charged.

When he was even­tu­al­ly charged for Lal­la’s mur­der along­side Govin­dra Lack­ram, 26, of Bas­ta Hall Vil­lage, Cou­va, he (Bee­tam) was al­so slapped with a charge un­der the Firearms Act for pos­ses­sion of 19 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion.

Ramkhal­whan point­ed out that if his client was in­stead charged un­der the reg­u­la­tions, he would face a max­i­mum penal­ty of a $100,000 fine and im­pris­on­ment for five years in­stead of fac­ing a max­i­mum $500,000 fine and im­pris­on­ment for 15 years un­der the Firearms Act.

“The Ap­pli­cant sub­mits that the im­pugned de­ci­sion is ul­tra vires the EPR and un­law­ful as the in­ves­ti­ga­tors ex­er­cised their statu­to­ry pow­ers pur­suant to the EPR at all ma­te­r­i­al times,” Ramkhal­whan said.

“Based on the ev­i­dence in this case, the po­lice ser­vice has adopt­ed an un­law­ful pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al pol­i­cy or prac­tice (charg­ing for pos­ses­sion of firearm and am­mu­ni­tion con­trary to the Firearms Act when the po­lice have ex­er­cised emer­gency pow­ers through­out the in­ves­ti­ga­tion) with the in­tent sole­ly to charge for an of­fence that at­tracts a more se­vere penal­ty,” he added.

Through the law­suit, Bee­tam is seek­ing a de­c­la­ra­tion over the de­ci­sion and an or­der quash­ing it.

Bee­tam is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by An­war Ho­sein.

The AG’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Ian Ben­jamin, SC, and Renu­ka Ramb­ha­jan.