CHIEF Justice Bryan Sykes last week berated the Jamaica Observer for allegedly casting “aspersion on the integrity of regional judges” by charging in an April 10, 2022 editorial that their decisions are open to political interference.

“In the editorial entitled ‘The Woeful Misapprehension of Dr Lloyd Barnett’, the author expressed opposition to Jamaica acceding to the appellate jurisdiction of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), claiming that politicians have intervened in the judicial process within the Caribbean to ‘influence outcomes on their own behalf or that of connected parties’,” Justice Sykes said.

The head of the Jamaican judiciary used the swearing-in ceremony for judges for the Easter Term of the Home Circuit Court last Wednesday at King’s House in St Andrew to urge the newspaper “to produce the evidence to support its claim”, adding that “it is wrong to malign judicial officers by making assertions without any proof”.

“If the Observer has any evidence that any politician or anyone has interfered with, and produced a result as a result of their influence, produce the evidence,” the chief justice was quoted as saying in a press statement from his Court Administration Division.

“What you [the Jamaica Observer] are really asserting is that despite coming to King’s House and taking the Judicial Oath of Office which we heard this morning — ‘to decide the cases without fear, favour, malice or ill-will according to the law, usages and Constitution of Jamaica’ — judges have in fact departed from this,” Chief Justice Sykes argued.

“If that evidence is not available, don’t make the naked assertion without proof. Let us know who the judge is [and] identify the decision. It also applies across the region.

“Appellate courts have been in the region now for the better part of half a century so if there is that evidence, produce it. We don’t know of any. We have never seen any.”

…Appeal court president blames Gov’t for not making CCJ final court

In the same press statement, president of the Court of Appeal, Justice Patrick Brooks also commented on the recent decision by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in Lescene

Edwards (Appellant) v The Queen (Respondent) where the UK law lords quashed Edwards’ conviction and called it a miscarriage of justice.

“The counsel for the successful applicant (Mrs Valerie Neita-Robertson) lamented that it was a pity that he could not get justice in his own country. Learned counsel made that comment in supporting the retention of the Privy Council as our final court.

“The first comment I will make is that there is no human institution that is infallible. The judges of the Court of Appeal do not claim to be infallible,” Justice Brooks added. “The Englishman or the Englishwoman, the Welshman or the Welshwoman who is successful in the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court is able to say that they got justice in their own country, not because their Court of Appeal doesn’t make errors but because their Supreme Court is in their territory.

“Although it is unfortunate and a pity that the Court of Appeal got it wrong in this case, it is also a pity that successive governments of this country have failed to express confidence in ourselves and have failed to adopt the Caribbean Court of Justice in place of the Privy Council as our final court so that the Jamaican man and the Jamaican woman can — like their Barbadian counterpart or [like] their counterparts in any of the other countries of the Caribbean [that] have adopted the Caribbean Court of Justice as their final court — say I can get justice in my own territory,” lamented Justice Brooks.