Attorney General
On Friday, Stabroek News printed the full text of a letter sent by Justice Franklin Holder to Chief Justice (ag) Yonette Cummings-Edwards, giving an account of the behaviour of Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs Basil Williams in his court on March 23. It surely must count among the most extraordinary letters any judge in our system of justice has sent in modern times. The hearing involved suspended Chairman of the Public Service Commission Carvil Duncan, whose lead counsel was a former Attorney General in the PPP/C government, Anil Nandlall.
Without going into the full details of events as related by the Judge, suffice it to say that Justice Holder said he “took umbrage” at Mr Williams’s tone and the insinuation that “the Court was being selective in recording the evidence.” It got worse: Justice Holder described the AG as standing in the well of the court, and in a “truculent manner” responding “that the last person who told him what he should not say, was a Magistrate and he is now dead.” It was what Mr Williams said next, however, which caused the Judge to rise from the Bench and go into his Chambers without adjourning the matter. “I could say what I want to say and when I want to say it,” the AG had said to him; “I have always been like that.”
This was not how Mr Williams described the exchange, although he did mention being cited for contempt by a magistrate following which he went on to say: “And … since then I have always been very particular about what I say to the courts … and I said coincidentally that magistrate is dead now.” Furthermore, he curiously blamed Mr Nandlall’s interruptions during the course of the case for what had occurred: “Nandlall is the one who caused the problem for three hours, and the engagement between the learned judge and myself was merely three minutes.” And in case anyone is puzzled as to how that would be possible, they must understand that the Minister of Legal Affairs has created a brand new psychological diagnosis called “transferred frustration” to explain the phenomenon. It may yet secure him a citation in the psychology textbooks, although surely not in the legal ones.
That aside ‒ and for the sake of argument accepting the AG’s version ‒ it is surely to treat a Judge with utter contempt to suggest first, that he cannot keep control in his courtroom so that Mr Nandlall is allowed to disrupt proceedings with apparent impunity; and second, that he has been so affected by that behaviour that he then takes it out on the irreproachable Mr Williams. If nothing else, it does not carry the patina of even-handedness. The Minister’s own account of what transpired, therefore, does not relieve him of the accusation of “contemptuous behaviour” towards the Judge; quite the contrary in fact. In addition, it should be noted that in his letter Justice Holder denied that Mr Nandlall had, in the AG’s words, “all morning … [been] disrespecting you.”