‘Nobody can dictate to judges’

The head of the judiciary took a swipe at Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs Delroy Chuck yesterday, saying nobody – “regardless of the office they hold” – can “dictate” to judges how the law should be interpreted.

Chief Justice Bryan Sykes made the comments a day after Chuck asserted that some judges appeared to be misinterpreting the Child Diversion Act by compelling minors charged with certain crimes to enter a plea of guilty before they are directed to a diversion programme offered by the Government.

The Child Diversion Act 2018 governs the Child Diversion Programme, which is aimed at steering children between 12 and 17 years old away from the formal criminal justice system when they are facing charges for specific crimes such as assault occasioning actual bodily harm and similar crimes.

Minors charged with murder, shooting with intent, robbery, and other serious crimes are not eligible for the programme, which offers rehabilitation and intervention support.

LIFELONG SCAR

The end result of the possible misinterpretation, Chuck said, is that minors end up with a criminal record that could follow them for life.

“The question is, ‘Is this an appropriate case for child diversion?’ and if it is, and the child goes through a process of child diversion and successfully completes it, then the matter is literally dismissed so the child doesn’t have a record,” the minister said during the meeting of a parliamentary committee that is reviewing the Child Diversion Act.

But responding to the comments during a meeting with journalists, the chief justice said judges are guided by the actual text of the statute and “not by the intention that persons may have in their brain”.

Further, he said there can be no direction to a judge, either from the chief justice or the president of the Court of Appeal as to how they should approach the interpretation of legislation.

“Ministerial statements are not part of the law, and no judge, acting in accordance with the judicial oath and the Constitution, can take any account of that,” Sykes said during a meeting with journalists dubbed ‘A Conversation with the Judiciary’, which was held in St Andrew.

“The text of the statute is the collective will of the Parliament, comprising the House of Representatives and the Senate,” he added.

He noted that there is a mechanism to correct issues if the view is that the legislation is unclear. “Go to Parliament [and] change the law to make clear what is said to be the policy of the legislation,” Sykes said.

Sykes noted, too, that as proposed laws go through the legislative process, members of Parliament have the right “and, indeed, the obligation” to make their views known on the content of the bill.

livern.barrett@gleanerjm.com