Thomas, Yasseen appeal adjourned until Full Court matter determined By Patrick Denny Stabroek News March 7, 2000 The Guyana Court of Appeal yesterday complied with a Full Court order preventing it from hearing an appeal in the case of two convicted Essequibo murderers pending the determination of a challenge in the lower court to the appellate panel's make up. The appeal, which was deferred to April 7, was brought by Attorney General, Charles Ramson. Convicted Essequibo murderers Noel Thomas and Abdool Saleem Yasseen are the respondents. The postponement is to allow the Full Court to hear and determine an appeal by Yasseen and Thomas against the refusal by Justice B.S. Roy to grant an ex parte application for a conservatory order to prevent the Court of Appeal as currently constituted from hearing the appeal by the Attorney General. The Attorney General's appeal is seeking to overturn a decision of the Full Court which had ruled that an edict by Justice Winston Moore not to extend the stay of execution which had prevented their execution on September 13, was wrong in law. The postponement will also allow the two convicted murderers to retain legal representation for the Court of Appeal matter as yesterday, their counsel, Stephen Fraser informed the court that he and his associate, Nigel Hughes, were present only to witness the proceedings since there was an order issued by the Full Court preventing the hearing of the matter. Yasseen, who was in court, also informed the court that he had not retained counsel but would do so after the issue of bias, which was the subject of the Full Court order, was heard and determined. Thomas, who was in court earlier, had to be taken away as he fell ill, and was reported to be vomiting blood after a bout of coughing in the docks. Chancellor of the Judiciary, Cecil Kennard, in delivering the ruling of the court, said that even though he and his colleagues considered the February 29, order by the Full Court irregular, they were still bound by it until the order was discharged. He also cited the authorities on which the court's ruling was founded. Before delivering the ruling, Chancellor Kennard, who sat with Justices of Appeal, Prem Persaud and Lennox Perry, made a number of preliminary remarks. In the course of those remarks, he complained that the press coverage of the proceedings when the appeal first came up last Wednesday did not give due regard to the court's complaint about the lack of disrespect shown to it by the Full Court. The lack of courtesy, he said, was its main complaint, to which he would not like to see the court exposed to again. He noted too that the statements and letters which appeared in the media including a statement by the Guyana Bar Association and a letter by its president, Miles Fitzpatrick, SC, and one purported to have been written by Clarence Hughes, SC, were published without comments being obtained from the Head of the Judiciary. The Chancellor stated that at a meeting on January 7, to set the date for the hearing of the appeal, at which the members of the court as well as counsel for the Attorney General and Thomas and Yasseen were present, no objection was made to the Appeal Court hearing the matter. He said that the desirable thing to have been done by the lawyers for Thomas and Yasseen, if they had been subsequently instructed by their clients to object to the panel as constituted hearing the case, was to have approached him about it. The Chancellor said too that if the judges who were presiding at the Full Court had called him to ask for the appeal to be postponed until after the matter was determined in the High Court, he would have acceded to the request. He said that the time which had been set aside for the hearing could have been utilised in dealing with other matters, at a time when the court and the public are complaining about delays. He stressed that the Court of Appeal, which was to hear the appeal was concerned only with determining the validity of the point of law being raised by the Attorney General. It was not concerned about whether the two murderers were to be executed or not; it was not their remit. The Chancellor also took exception to the Bar Association's reference in its statement to the language used by the Court of Appeal judges during last Wednesday's proceedings. He said that they were "mature enough to know what language to use" and given that they were complaining about the lack of courtesy extended to them, it was "moderate". Also, he said, they were "judges for a long time and they should credit us with knowledge of the Constitution." The Chancellor also took objection to the suggestion by the Bar Association that there should be a meeting between the judges of the Full Court and the Court of Appeal on the way forward on this matter. He stressed that the court had no quarrel with the High Court regarding orders it makes within its jurisdiction but was happy to note that the judges of the Full Court who had issued the order had worked until 10 pm. The Chancellor said that the whole episode could have been avoided as lawyers for the Court of Appeal judges were present earlier in the day at an inter partes hearing where Thomas and Yasseen were the plaintiffs. This, he said, was mere hours before the Full Court hearing, where the Appeal Court judges had been denied the fundamental right of being heard and that was not the way to treat members of the highest court of the country. The Chancellor said that there was "absolutely no urgency as the two convicted murderers were not about to be executed" and that it was a point the Full Court had missed. He noted the remarks by former chancellor Keith Massiah, SC, when he welcomed himself and Chief Justice Desiree Bernard on their appointments in 1996 in which he urged them to review the practice of the issue of injunctions on the basis of ex parte applications. In those remarks, the Chancellor said that Massiah had referred to chief justice Hugh Wooding's stricture that the ex parte orders should not be granted lightly and should be issued only if there were strong grounds for doing so. He said that Massiah had also recalled that it was the practice in England for the other side to be notified in ex parte applications but that in Guyana, the practice was observed more in the breach. Commenting on the letter which he described as purported to have been written by Clarence Hughes and which appeared in the Stabroek News, the Chancellor said that it contained a reference to a report on Channel 28's Evening News. According to the newscast, Clarence Hughes's letter claimed, the judges had said that if the conservatory order issued by the High Court was permissible then the magistrate's courts could also issue such an order. "The court made no such comment. Where Channel 28 got that from I don't know." He also accused someone of manipulating the press, referring to the Guyana Chronicle which carried a report that the Full Court decision was ten pages long and later corrected that to say that it had been delivered in less than five minutes. The Chancellor's decision was delivered to a packed courtroom. Among attendees were Attorney General, Charles Ramson, SC, Fitzpatrick, Nigel Hughes and Derek Jagan, SC. The Chancellor interrupted his delivery several times to admonish those present to cease the cross talk and to remind them that the court was still sitting. After one of these interruptions, Fraser took his leave of the court. The Court of Appeal had set the matter for a decision yesterday on whether to comply with the Full Court order, with which it was served just before it sat on Wednesday, staying the hearing of the appeal. On that occasion, it expressed disquiet about the fact that the members of the court had not been notified that the ex parte motion was being heard given the allegations of bias and lack of independence being made against them. Justices Desmond Burch-Smith and Carl Singh constituted the Full Court. Justice Singh defended the issuing of the order in an invited comment to Stabroek News pointing out that Article 153 had given the High Court a special jurisdiction to hear cases where a person feared his fundamental rights were being infringed or were in imminent danger of being infringed. Justice Singh noted then that it was the High Court and the High Court alone which had jurisdiction to hear these cases. Nigel Hughes had told this newspaper that Rule 43 order 16 of the High Court, under which the Full Court was approached, did not contemplate an inter partes hearing.