Judge threatens lawyers amidst reported gun threat
JUSTICE Winston Moore yesterday threatened to issue contempt citations if the lawyers at the reprieve hearing for condemned murderers Abdool Saleem Yassin and Noel Thomas continue their misconduct. The judge directed his remarks to Attorney General (AG) Charles Ramson, SC and opposite counsel Stephen Fraser, who, at one stage, sought leave of the Court to walk out in protest of what he called continuous heckling by the other. Ramson had earlier accused Fraser of using innuendos to taunt him. Fraser also said one of his juniors had alleged that Ramson, who carries a firearm, issued a threat to shoot him the day before. Fraser said, because of the gun threatening of his colleague, he would refuse to further address the Court unless Ramson disarms himself of the weapon strapped around him. Ramson, laughing, responded:"You want to deprive me of my constitutional right to carry a gun?" The cross-talk ceased when Justice Moore warned he would charge anyone who "steps out of his crease". But Fraser, who was addressing the Bench on affidavits, claimed he was still being disturbed by Ramson and got permission to depart the courtroom. His associate, Mr Nigel Hughes held the brief for the rest of yesterday morning but Fraser resumed in the afternoon and wrapped up his arguments. Fraser maintained that Ramson had denied the convicted killers of proper consideration by the Committee on the Prerogative of Mercy. Fraser said Ramson had strenuously argued against acceptance of the convicts' recommended release by the United Nation Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) and disqualified himself from sitting as Chairman of the Mercy Committee, because he always held the view that the men must be hanged. However, when he began his reply which will continue today, Ramson pointed out that he is a part of the Advisory Council on Mercy and the Minister designated to advise the President. He explained, though, that, while it is his duty to give advice to the President, he could not direct the Head of State to sign the death warrants. Before closing, Fraser cited an authority in which it was held that, where a person was known to have held a biased opinion in a matter, the individual was disqualified from sitting in a related tribunal on which he could be judge in his own cause. He added the `Pratt' Jamaica precedent where a pronouncement was made on "frivolous and time wasting resort to legal proceedings" by prisoners. Fraser said it was after the Government failed to heed what the UNHRC recommended that the applicants approached the Court for a declaration that failure to honour it was a violation of their rights under the constitution. Fraser said, when the UNHRC proffered the opinion, Guyana was a signatory to the Optional Protocol and had not yet withdrawn from it. Therefore, Yassin and Thomas had a legitimate right to expect that the proposal would be favourably considered by the Government. Fraser said, instead of granting the declaration sought, Justice Carl Singh, last July 30, ordered the Advisory Council to consider the proposition within 14 days and gave the designated Minister five days after to express his own deliberate opinion as to whether the President should exercise the powers to commute the death sentence. Fraser said, subsequent to that order, the Council met under Ramson's chairmanship and the killers were not afforded any opportunity to be heard at that forum, by the Minister or the President. Fraser, stressing that the Council, too, is subject to the supervision of the courts, urged Justice Moore to find that the body was tainted by bias, through the presence of Ramson in the chair and that was in breach of the principles of separation of powers. Alternatively, Fraser contended, Justice Singh was not constitutionally authorised to initiate a sitting of the Council and everything that followed was and is a nullity. Fraser repeated that Justice Singh acted unlawfully when he directed the Council to specifically take into account the report of the UNHRC, as the edict impinged on the discretion allowed the Minister under Article 190 (1) of the Constitution. Yassin and Thomas, who secured a temporary reprieve from Justice Moore hours before they were to be hung earlier this month, have been sentenced to die for the 1987 murder of Abdool Kaleem Yassin, younger brother of the other Yassin, who was shot dead because of dispute over their father's estate. The two on `death row' are seeking, among other things, to escape the gallows.
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