Bloodied but unbowed. Jamaica’s first woman Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Paula Llewellyn walked away from the job Sunday, 16 years after marching spectacularly into history, unable to survive the latest legal skirmish that had its genesis in parliamentary anguish.

In the end, the legal gladiator hung up her spurs meekly. Her decision not to wait out the likely long battle to come over a constitutional ruling about extending her stay was encapsulated in a terse statement from the Attorney General’s (AG) Chambers: “The Director of Public Prosecutions has advised that she is unable to carry out the functions of her office at this time.”

Llewellyn’s departure could well serve to deepen the confusion that reigned in the hours following Friday’s ruling by the Constitutional Court after the AG indicated that the Public Service Commission would be invited to appoint a qualified person to act in the role of DPP for the time being.

Before the ink could dry on that statement, Leader of the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) Mark Golding suggested that there is an absence of a Public Service Commission (PSC) “whose term was negligently allowed to expire on March 31, 2024 without a new PSC being put in place to ensure seamless public administration”.

This, Golding declared, was a significant oversight by the Government that “could hinder ongoing public services, including the critical appointment of an acting DPP”.

“It is clear that the public statements made by the Attorney General Dr Derrick McKoy and the Minister of Justice Delroy Chuck in the wake of the court’s decision represent either a profound misunderstanding or deliberate obfuscation of the law as expressed in the judgment of the Constitutional Court.

“Their actions have fatally undermined their credibility as holders of those important offices. The People’s National Party is therefore calling for the immediate resignations of both the attorney general and the minister of justice,” Golding demanded.

Throughout Sunday a slew of claims circulated on social media that the DPP’s office would be vacant, or not, come Monday morning, but with no official statement being made until well after dark.

The Jamaican Bar Association was forced to issue an advisory to its membership late Sunday evening. An attorney speaking to the
Jamaica Observer on condition of anonymity said registrars for the Gun Court and Circuit Courts over the weekend contacted individual attorneys “informing them that their matters will be postponed because of and until a DPP is appointed”, making it so that matters set to continue today [Monday] would not be heard.

“As it stands, though, we don’t even know what’s happening. My latest information was that the chief justice has stated it to the registries and the Government and the chief justice spoke, and there may be an acting DPP,” the attorney said.

“I gather that they [the courts] have formed the view that the office of the DPP is vacant and by virtue of that prosecutors don’t have the authority to be acting on behalf of the DPP, so even though the attorney general has published an interpretation, that interpretation is not shared by the wider legal fraternity,” the attorney told the Observer.

However, several hours later, head of the Jamaican Bar Kevin Powell, said that based on indications from the court’s administration, matters were expected to proceed.

Flooded by calls from its members, the defence Bar advised that their matters before the Home Circuit and Gun Court divisions of the courts would not be stood down until a DPP is in place as was being speculated.

At press time the justice ministry had not budged from its decision to appeal last Friday’s ruling “after careful consideration of the judgment and in the public interest”.

On Friday, April 19 an all-woman Full Court comprising justices Tricia Hutchinson Shelly, Simone Wolfe-Reece, and Sonya Wint Blair held that, while the amendment to the Act increasing the retirement age of the DPP from 60 to 65 is constitutional, a new provision introduced into the constitution via a second amendment, giving the DPP the right to elect to remain in office without any role by the prime minister or the Opposition is “not a valid section and is severed from the constitution because the process remains unchanged for extending the retirement age”.

Consequently, the panel said the section is “unconstitutional, null, void, and of no legal effect”.

In a stellar career marked by a series of firsts, Llewellyn, a career prosecutor, was appointed director of public prosecutions in March 2008 — the first woman to hold the position. Unlike previous DPPs, who had been appointed simply on the recommendation of the prime minister, she had to apply through a competitive selection process administered by the PSC. She was the first woman to act in the position of director in 1999, and in 2003 became the first female to be appointed in the position of senior deputy director of public prosecutions.

After establishing her credentials, Llewellyn emerged in 2008, confident, courageous, and all-conquering, from the legal jungle which is the nation’s justice system. On her way up, she battled some of Jamaica’s most accomplished lawyers, among them KD Knight, Frank Phipps, Ian Ramsay, Jacqueline Samuels-Brown, Churchill Neita, and Tom Tavares-Finson. She has figured in cases ranging from Jim Brown to Zeeks, from Joel Andem to Mary Lynch, and from Trafigura to Dudus.

In the heat of the legal arena she has faced almost all of Jamaica’s King’s Counsel, including PJ Patterson, the former prime minister; Winston Spaulding; Lord Anthony Gifford; Headley Cunningham; Velma Hylton; Patrick Atkinson; Dr Lloyd Barnett; and Delroy Chuck.

Possessed of a voracious prosecutorial appetite, Llewellyn’s passion for law and order has not been tempered by the decades of practice in the island’s courts, from the lowest to the highest.

“She is in a class of her own in the justice system. In the exercise of her vast powers, she can act first and tell the justice minister later,” one writer said of her.

But Llewellyn had often complained that, like many strong women before her, the obstacles she faced were often motivated by sexist sentiments and the fact that she could never be compromised.

She made a habit of knocking over her many combatants like pin balls. But on Sunday, a year before she would have ended her tenure, the unthinkable came.