Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter/Pro­duc­er

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Mem­bers of the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty have come to the de­fence of Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress To­co/San­gre Grande can­di­date Wayne Sturge, af­ter he came un­der fire for speak­ing out against crime hav­ing rep­re­sent­ed sus­pect­ed gang lead­ers and oth­er no­to­ri­ous peo­ple charged with heinous of­fences.

Dur­ing a war of words be­tween Sturge and Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) leader Gary Grif­fith, the lat­ter said, “I have a lot of stan­dards for my­self ... I would nev­er be some­body as an at­tor­ney who will go out of my way to rep­re­sent every sin­gle ma­jor gang leader in this coun­try to en­sure they go out on bail af­ter be­ing charged for mur­der, kid­nap­ping, griev­ous bod­i­ly harm and il­le­gal weapons.”

Sturge had pre­vi­ous­ly crit­i­cised Grif­fith’s tenure as po­lice com­mis­sion­er, say­ing the now NTA leader took cred­it for a low mur­der rate when it may have been down to lock­down re­stric­tions dur­ing COVID-19.

But As­sem­bly of South­ern Lawyers (ASL) pres­i­dent Saira Lakhan yes­ter­day de­fend­ed Sturge’s right to prac­tise his pro­fes­sion while mak­ing a tran­si­tion in­to ac­tive pol­i­tics, not­ing it was not new.

“If a crim­i­nal at­tor­ney tran­si­tions in­to pol­i­tics, it can be ar­gued that it is a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion of their com­mit­ment to jus­tice, fair­ness and the rule of law,” Lakhan said.

“For ex­am­ple, Prakash Ra­mad­har, Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, who is a for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al of this coun­try, would have been one of those at­tor­neys who would have done crim­i­nal law sig­nif­i­cant­ly al­so for gangs and per­sons ac­cused of be­ing in­volved in drugs. So, de­fence at­tor­neys, like every­body else, have a job to do.”

Lakhan said she does not be­lieve any per­son should be pro­hib­it­ed from pol­i­tics be­cause of their pro­fes­sion.

At­tor­ney Om Lal­la mean­while said just be­cause an at­tor­ney rep­re­sents some­one who may ap­pear to the pub­lic to be an un­savoury char­ac­ter, it does not un­der­mine who they are.

“If all lawyers were to take a po­si­tion to say they would on­ly pick and choose who they want to rep­re­sent, the en­tire crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem would fall by the way­side,” Lal­la said.

“I don’t think any lawyer should be chas­tised for rep­re­sent­ing peo­ple be­fore the courts be­cause every­one is en­ti­tled to fair rep­re­sen­ta­tion, whether it is by pri­vate re­tain­er, le­gal aid or pub­lic de­fend­ers’ de­part­ment, the sys­tem can’t run ef­fi­cient­ly un­less peo­ple are rep­re­sent­ed.”

He be­lieves the crit­i­cism lev­elled against Sturge is un­fair, not­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic of­ten project their frus­tra­tions with the le­gal sys­tem on­to the lawyers.

“We have a prob­lem in the coun­try where the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is not op­er­at­ing the way in which it should, and be­cause of the flaws in the sys­tem, many peo­ple get off due to tech­ni­cal­i­ties or be­cause of the in­ef­fi­cien­cies in the sys­tem and then lawyers will get blamed for it but you have to look at it holis­ti­cal­ly,” he posit­ed.

Lal­la said while any­one can be­come fair game in the po­lit­i­cal are­na, Sturge is not the first of his kind.

“Karl Hud­son- Phillips, Desmond Al­lum, Theodore Guer­ra, all have played pol­i­tics and all have rep­re­sent­ed peo­ple who may not have been the most savoury char­ac­ters,” he said.

Ra­jiv Per­sad SC al­so said it would be un­fair to as­sume a lawyer who rep­re­sents al­leged or con­vict­ed crim­i­nals can­not have an in­put in the na­tion­al dis­course on crime.

In fact, Per­sad said Sturge may be in an ad­van­ta­geous po­si­tion giv­en his ex­pe­ri­ence.

“His ex­pe­ri­ence as a lawyer in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem gives him a very good stand­point to be able to talk about jus­tice, crime and the work­ings of the sys­tem. Mr Sturge, who is en­ti­tled just as any oth­er lawyer to rep­re­sent who he wants, gives him a van­tage point that I think so­ci­ety as a whole can ben­e­fit from. It is good when we see peo­ple with that ex­pe­ri­ence putting them­selves up for pub­lic ser­vice. Every­one has a right to crit­i­cise and that is their en­ti­tle­ment,” Per­sad said.

But po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed is of the view that while Sturge should not be ad­mon­ished for his clien­tele, it is time for him and Grif­fith to end to the pub­lic spat, as they run the risk of chas­ing away an elec­torate that wants to hear about so­lu­tions to crime.

“Let’s stop that non­sense. The rhetoric needs to end. Poli­cies and how we go about im­ple­ment­ing those poli­cies that fix our so­ci­ety is what is go­ing to cause peo­ple to start pay­ing at­ten­tion and tak­ing po­lit­i­cal par­ties se­ri­ous­ly, and if peo­ple can­not do that ef­fec­tive­ly, then God help us,” Mo­hammed ar­gued.