Appeal court definition of undue delay should be used -Ramson
By Patrick Denny
The test to determine inordinate or undue delay should be that recommended by the local appeal court rather than that the UK Privy Council set in the case of Pratt and Morgan, Attorney General Charles Ramson SC, yesterday urged the Court hearing the Noel Thomas and Abdool Yasseen case. The Court over which Justice Winston Moore is presiding is hearing arguments to determine whether the ex parte order he issued on September 12 staying the execution of the two men should be continued. They were due to be hanged on September 13. According to their counsel, Stephen Fraser, the time recommended by the Privy Council in its decision on the Pratt and Morgan case was five years in those countries where appeals to the United Nations Committee on Human Rights (UNCHR) were allowed. Also, he said that for those countries where this remedy was not available it should be three years. He had pointed out that his clients had spent a total of nine years on death row. However, Ramson argued that the guideline which should be used by the Court to determine whether there had been inordinate delay should be that given by Justice of Appeal Maurice Churaman. He told the Court that Justice Churaman had said that the Court should balance the right to a fair trial against the public expectation that the Court would punish those convicted for wrong doing. Further, Ramson contended that the time which they had spent on death row was partly of their own doing, pointing out, as an example, their appeal to the UNCHR which prevented the State from executing them while their petition was being considered by that body. Other arguments by Ramson focussed on Thomas' and Yasseen's right to raise issues which had been adjudicated in previous hearings or should have been ventilated at those hearings. He cited cases decided by the Trinidad and Tobago Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court of India and the Privy Council which he said found that once an issue had been determined by another Court it could not be raised again in another proceeding except in special circumstances. Fraser contends that the July 30, 1999, ruling by Justice Carl Singh was ultra vires, null and void because he trespassed unto the preserve of the executive by ordering that the Advisory Council on the Exercise of the Prerogative of Mercy should meet. Responding to a question by Justice Moore whether the death penalty should not be considered a special circumstance, Ramson contended that it is not. He pointed out that the death penalty had always been facing Thomas and Yasseen. To be considered a special circumstance, Ramson contended, there would have had to have been a change of government policy as a result of which they faced the prospect of being hung which had not existed before. Justice Moore also raised the point as to whether the recommendation by the UNCHR that Thomas and Yasseen should be set free had not raised nationalist sentiment which militated against them. Before he resumed listening to arguments from Ramson, Justice Moore ruled that the Guyana Chronicle should apologise to the Attorney General for an inaccurate report which had appeared in its issue of October 2 headlined `Guns no longer allowed in Supreme Court'. He observed that the report was grossly inaccurate. The report, Ramson pointed out to the Court, contained statements which were inaccurate and designed to impugn the justice system of which he was a part. Moore said that he had been a little baffled by the report since it gave the impression that there had been gun play in his court. He said that he had received a number of calls from his friends commenting on the incident as reported by the Chronicle. Justice Moore pointed out that more people had been defamed by lies than by the truth.
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