Search Warrants

What is the proper response of a Justice of the Peace in Anguilla who is asked to issue a search warrant?  We all heard recently about a search warrant executed by the police.  The warrant had been issued by a Justice of the Peace, or JP.  The JP in question is no ordinary one.  He is the Rt Rev Errol Brooks OBE Bishop of the Diocese of the Northeastern Caribbean and Aruba.  The warrant had been sought by the police to search the offices of a young attorney.  They said she had appeared in court representing a person charged with fraud.  She is no ordinary young attorney.  She is one with a spotless record.  More to the point, she is a candidate in the upcoming general elections.  These are all issues that cried out for the application in question to be treated with strict regard to the law governing the issuing of search warrants. 

 The issuing of a warrant to search someone’s home or office is not a task lightly to be executed.  It is not a mere administrative task, to be routinely performed.  The issuing of a search warrant is a quasi-judicial function, to be performed based on the evidence presented to the Magistrate or other judicial officer.  Such a warrant includes power to enter the premises, by force, and breaking doors, if necessary, and to search the same for files, correspondence, computers, cellular telephones, flash drives, fixed and external hard drives, and to seize such items and bring them in due course before the Magistrate.  Such an application in relation to any professional such as a certified accountant, a physician or a lawyer, becomes a particularly sensitive matter.  The private and confidential affairs of possibly hundreds of innocent clients will be exposed to unauthorized eyes, and no one knows what use will be made of the information.  Such a step is clearly open to abuse.

The real reason why the police are not permitted to search a home or office without a warrant is to interpose the protection of a judicial decision between the citizen and the police.  All jurisdictions with the rule of law put constraints on the powers of police investigators.  They may not invade a home or office unless they obtain a search warrant, save where the officer is in ‘hot pursuit’.  It is a basic line of defence of the citizen against arbitrary search and seizure that such a warrant be first obtained.  Otherwise, we should all be subject to home invasion by the armed wing of the State on the slightest suspicion. 

As every first year law student learns, such a quasi-judicial function is to be performed only on the judicial officer being satisfied that the prescribed circumstances exist.  Our liberty depends on the independent scrutiny of the judiciary to protect the citizen against the excesses which would inevitably flow from allowing an executive officer to decide for himself whether the conditions under which he is permitted to enter upon private property have been met.  That is why an application for a search warrant must be accompanied by an affidavit setting out the evidence available and the grounds for the officer’s belief that further evidence is likely to be obtained as a result of the search.  Only a trained lawyer, familiar with the laws of evidence and the intricacies of criminal procedure, is likely to be able properly to perform this serious function.  No lay JP, even one as eminent as a Bishop, is qualified to issue such a warrant.  Such a warrant would only be granted by a qualified Magistrate if he or she was first satisfied that there was adequate evidence and grounds for suspicion.  This basic protection of the citizen must not be permitted to be trampled by the unnecessary use of a lay JP to avoid  the investigator having to go before a qualified Magistrate and to satisfy him that the test has been met.

So, the question becomes, how is a non-legal Justice of the Peace in Anguilla properly supposed to react when a police officer comes to him or her, in the middle of a political campaign, just before general elections, when there are two qualified acting Magistrates who could easily have been approached, and the lay JP is requested to issue a search warrant to search a professional person’s office and/or home, especially when that person is a candidate for election to the House of Assembly?  

 In my submission, the only proper thing for him to respond is, “There are two qualified Magistrates in Anguilla at this time.  You are asking me to do something that is going to have very serious consequences for the reputation and future career of a young professional.  There will be serious implications for the political campaign of this candidate for election to the House of Assembly.  You must be crazy if you think I am going to just sign and issue the Warrant without knowing what I am doing.  Leave my office immediately!”

For the future guidance of all non-lawyer JPs in Anguilla, that would be the only proper reaction to such a request.

The job

On Becoming a Judge – By Don Mitchell CBE QC, former secretary of the OECS Bar Association, 1989-1999

When your heart gives out, and you die ten times on the operating table, it is usually a good sign that it is time to retire from the practice of law.  That happened to me. 

I can still remember Dr Terry Isaacs, my wife’s gynaecologist, settling me onto his examination couch with the words, “Well, Don, I’ll do my best, but you are the wrong gender, and I will be examining the wrong end.”  He was the only doctor I knew in St Vincent at the time. 

He listened hard on his stethoscope for a few minutes, then said, “Don, you have the heart rate of a teenage Somali long-distance runner.  That would be very good if you were a teenage Somali long-distance runner. But, since you are a sedentary middle aged West Indian lawyer, I think you should go to see a specialist.”  With that, he dispatched me to be examined by Jeff Massay in Barbados.

Jeff is a brilliant surgeon, and he undoubtedly saved my life.  I remember him intently reading the notes his nurse had made, then looking up and saying, “Your heart is beating only 45 times per minute.”

“Is that good or bad”, I asked.  He shook his head, “Lawyers and lizards, we always knew both of you required very little oxygen.”

After that he put me on the table in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and inserted my pacemaker.  He had to put it on the right hand side of my chest.  He said as he did so, “Not to worry, Don, usually with lawyers we find no heart at all.  At least you have one, even if it is on the wrong side.”

That is when I died and retired from law and went to heaven as a judge in St Vincent.

Years later, Chief Justice Dennis Bryon told me of the shock he received when he got his first pay cheque as a judge in Antigua.  His two sons’ school fees in Barbados were more than the total amount of the judge’s pay cheque.  He had to bring them back home immediately.  My salary cheque for my first month did not cover Maggie and my wine bill at Gonsalves Liquors in Kingstown.

In fact, the salary cheque was only a few hundred dollars more than I used to pay one of my secretaries before I closed my practice.  I must say conditions improved a couple of years later when the Prime Ministers agreed to double our salaries.  I trust it has been doubled again.  They cannot continue to rely on a supply of half-dead lawyers being available to fill the bench of the Easter Caribbean Supreme Court.

After two and a half years in St Vincent, with spells in Grenada, St Lucia and Dominica, the Chief Justice moved me to Antigua.  There I was to spend another two and a half years, with spells in Nevis, St Kitts, Montserrat, Anguilla and Tortola.  The amount of work was overwhelming.  I remember asking the Chief Justice why he kept sending me to places where there was so much work to do.  His only response was, “Don we are both Kittitians.  Kittitians really know how to cut cane.”  Which, I think, was his way of telling me not to be a wimp, but to soldier on.

I think I did well to survive doing the job for five years.  I was ready to go after four.  But, I hung on for five, because I had been told by head office in St Lucia that five years would ensure I got a pension, or at the very least a gratuity.  Four years’ service would not count.  Five years would be necessary for there to be a little reward at the end of the day. 

After five years on the bench, I was completely exhausted.  I was dropping things and forgetting things.  I went to see the premier psychiatrist in Antigua, Dr James King.  I told him that I was very worried, as I was in the terminal stages of Alzheimers.  He asked me why I was seeing him if I already knew what my problem was.  I explained that I needed a second opinion.

He took pity on me and gave me an examination.  I had to answer a lot of questions and do various memory tricks.  At the end of it, he explained to me that I was not suffering from Alzheimers.  I was, he said, an aging obsessive-compulsive.  Apparently, when you are a young obsessive-compulsive that is not such a bad thing.  As Dr King explained, he would much rather have an obsessive-compulsive lawyer worrying over his clients’ legal problem than have one who laughed and relaxed all the time while mailing out his bills.

The problem with being an aging obsessive-compulsive is that your body cannot answer to all the demands it was able to handle in younger years.  The body begins to rebel when you decide to do two trials a day, and one hundred Chamber matters on Friday morning.  Since it takes two days to prepare for one day of Chamber matters, that means staying up to all hours of the night reading files and making notes about their contents.  One did that in between writing the judgments. 

We were told we had to write our judgments within three months of the end of the case.  That was too long a period.  Every time I waited three months, it was a disaster.  I had to read every file and every note all over again.  It was like I had never seen the witnesses nor heard the evidence.  I found I had to write every judgment within a day or two of the end of the trial, since I immediately forgot that the trial had ever taken place, far less what had been said in it.  Dr King explained it was the natural result of an aging obsessive-compulsive believing that he could continue to bite off more than he could chew.

The doctor recommended that I take a long holiday.  What did he mean by a long holiday?  Six months, he suggested.  Needless to say, being an obsessive-compulsive, I applied for a year off.  To my astonishment, the Judicial and Legal Services Commission granted it.  They must really have been glad to see my back.  So, we packed up the dogs and possessions, gave up the house in Antigua, and flew back to Anguilla.

After six months resting, gardening, reacquainting myself with family and friends, I was thoroughly enjoying myself.  You can imagine what I did next.  I compulsively wrote to the acting Chief Justice, Adrian Saunders, submitting my resignation.  I had had enough.  There was no way I was going back to that heavy burden of obsessively trying cases and worrying about justice in Antigua and Barbuda.

It would have been nice if there had been the promised gratuity at the end of it.  Turns out, you have to work for at least ten years to expect to get anything under the Pensions Act of Anguilla.  I did not fight it.  There was no client to pay my fees for going to court.  I compulsively forgot about pension. 

Since then, I have been obsessively enjoying myself teaching CAPE law three half-days a week in the High School in Anguilla.  I have 18 students this year.  I fill in the spare time providing a free legal aid clinic three half-days a week out of the Welfare Department. 

I call it practising stress-free law.

[I wrote this article for the OECS Bar Association 20th anniversary commemorative magazine published earlier this month.  My apologies to those who have heard the jokes before.]

Lawyers

It is not every day I get to say something positive about lawyers. So here goes.

      On Friday night, I had the pleasure of introducing Courtney Abel of the Anguilla Bar to the judges and lawyers of the Eastern Caribbean attending the 20^th anniversary dinner of the OECS Bar Association at Coco Resort in St Lucia. This is what I said.

      Courtney Abel was the President of the OECS Bar Association from 2004 to 2006. His presidency was noted for his ceaseless efforts to convert the Association from a well-meaning talk-shop into a professional body, with the necessary institutional capacity that would enable it to perform the functions required of a modern, professional Bar Association in a globalised economy.

      He lobbied continuously throughout his term to persuade us to move away from being an essentially amateurish, non-self-regulating association to a professional body, regulated by statute on terms acceptable to us.

      To that end, he proposed that it be compulsory that:

• All lawyers' accounts be audited annually;
  


• We all be required to attend a programme of continuing legal education;
  


• Professional indemnity insurance be obtained by every attorney;
  


• We adhere to a strict Code of Ethics;
  


• Every practising attorney pay local and regional Bar Association dues;
  


• We contribute to a pension plan to provide for us in retirement; and
  


• All attorneys contribute to the endowment of a Benevolent Plan for the relief of indigent lawyers and their families.
  

      On 15 September 2006, at a Special Meeting of the members held in Tortola, the Constituent Members of the Association voted unanimously to adopt voluntarily the above provisions, pending their introduction by a Legal Professional Act. That the legislatures of most of our nine member states and territories of the OECS have not yet introduced and passed the necessary legislation is only to be regretted.

Magistracy

Why is it not appropriate for the Commissioner of Police of Anguilla on his retirement to be appointed Magistrate of Anguilla?  It is unfortunate that I have to ask this question.  The answer should be obvious to all.  The answer is that such an appointment will tend to undermine public confidence in the administration of justice, and to bring the judiciary into contempt.  Just in case there is one single person out there who does not  see the point immediately, let me try my best to explain why this is so.

First of all, every police case brought in the Magistrate’s Court is brought in the name of the Commissioner of Police.  The Magistrate’s Court deals with 95% of the criminal cases brought to court in any country.  The trial of crime in Anguilla is for all practical purposes synonymous with the Magistrate’s Court.  If I get a summons, it will be titled “Commissioner of Police versus Don Mitchell”.  Then, every single investigation of a crime is conducted under the direction of the Commissioner of Police.  He is the head of the police force. 

In addition to the obvious conflicts of interest and questions of bias raised, there is the fundamental question of the separation of powers.  At least since the time of the Duc de Montesquieu, the principle of separation of powers has been an intrinsic foundation of the rule of law.  Ask any first year law student.

The consequence is that for a person who served as the senior executive officer of the police force to move directly into the position of Magistrate of Anguilla, without even a cooling off period of several years, is to induce such mistrust and misgivings in society as will tend to undermine the administration of justice in this country. 

What am I going to think about the sort of justice I am going to get if, when I respond to the summons, and turn up in court on Monday morning, and the man, who just a few scant months ago was the chief investigator into the charges brought against, me is sitting there with a smile on his face asking me how do I plead to the charge?  To say that I would feel outrage is the least of it.

            Then, there is the question of qualification.  It is not written in a law anywhere that I recall, but, a stipendiary Magistrate in the Leeward Islands, ie, one who is a qualified lawyer and who is paid a salary, has not since at least the 1890s been considered to be properly qualified unless he or she is a licensed barrister or attorney at law who has practised at the Bar for a minimum period of 5 years prior to the appointment.  The reason for this rule is well known to all legal practitioners.  Only a practicing attorney will be attuned to the finer points of the rules of evidence and of law.  When the Commissioner of Anguilla cabled me in 1976 in St Kitts and invited me to come to Anguilla to be the Magistrate, his cable said in part, “We understand you have been a practicing barrister for the past five years . . .”  By that, he meant that in his opinion I had the minimum qualification.

            This is particularly important when you are aware of the legal history of Anguilla.  Some 30 years and more ago, in the year 1978 to be exact, Anguilla had not yet re-joined the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court.  We were finding it difficult to get a judge to conduct the Criminal Assizes in Anguilla.  The Anguilla House of Assembly, in an attempt to speed up justice and to reduce the backlog of indictable cases, enacted a law making almost every felony and misdemeanour, excepting only murder, manslaughter and rape, triable by the Magistrate.  The Magistrate of Anguilla undoubtedly has the widest jurisdiction of any Magistrate anywhere in the West Indies.  It is a grave responsibility to be the Magistrate of Anguilla.  Only an attorney, not only well-learned in the principles of law, but also well-schooled in the practice of law, will be considered by the Bar to be capable of dispensing justice in such a court to the people of Anguilla.  Academic qualification alone is not sufficient.

In the case of our Commissioner, it is true that he went to law school.  It is true that he received both a bachelor of laws and a legal education certificate.  He is academically qualified to be a Magistrate.  But, this occurred some 10 to 15 years ago.  Since then, he has functioned solely as an officer within the police force.  He may have appeared as a prosecutor once or twice in the early days, but not in the past 10 years to my knowledge.  As such, in my opinion, he is completely unqualified for the job.

There is nothing wrong with a police officer rising to fill the post of Magistrate.  Many of us older heads know the story of John Lynch-Wade.  He served for nearly 30 years as Chief of Police of St Kitts.  He was the Chief of Police in Basseterre at the time of the Anguilla Revolution of 1967, and was alive and well when I last greeted him not a year ago.  When ‘Chiefie Wade’ retired, he went to UWI in Barbados and studied law.  On receiving his LlB, he went on to law school in Trinidad and obtained his legal education certificate.  He returned to St Kitts where he practised law for several years.  He was then placed on contract to be a Magistrate.  He functioned so well, that he rose to be the most senior Magistrate in St Kitts.  He filled that post for many years, until, a few years ago, he retired much loved and appreciated.  But, you see the difference, I hope.

            It is not as if this is the first time we have raised this issue in Anguilla.  I can well remember when a young Crown Counsel returned from Law School to Anguilla about 15 years ago.  Some Attorney-General made the idiotic recommendation to have him appointed as the Magistrate of Anguilla shortly after he returned from completing his education.  The Bar Association went on strike, and caused an uproar.  The Magistrate in question was told in no uncertain terms that no barrister would permit his or her client to appear before him, as he was not qualified to dispense justice in a court of law.  He quietly allowed himself to be transferred to Administration, from which he has now risen to be the Deputy Governor of Anguilla. 

            And now, he is on the verge, the cusp, of making the same mistake all over again.

Congo

There are two web pages I want you to read. One is a judgment of the High Court in Anguilla in relation to how the Attorney-General’s Chambers handled the case against Joe Brice. The A-G’s Chambers were representing Niguel Streete. He is the Director of the Anguilla Financial Services Commission. The Commission is the offshore industry watchdog for Anguilla. The judgment is only three pages long. Read it and weep. If you need any explanation for any part of it, let me know. After you have finished reading, tell me which of you would want the A-G’s Chambers representing you in a dog bite case.

The second web page, titled Undue Diligence, belongs to Global Witness. It concerns the case of Denis Christel Sassou Nguesso. He is the son of the President of the Republic of Congo. He stands accused of stealing the oil wealth of the citizens of Congo. He used an Anguillian company, Long Beach, to do some of his embezzlements. [This report is very long. Use the search feature to find the bits that mention Anguilla.]

Global Witness is an international NGO established in 1993. It works to break the links between natural resource exploitation, conflict, poverty, corruption, and human rights abuses worldwide. This is a story of corruption in high places in Congo. My concern is how the events revealed affect Anguilla. The connection with Anguilla is the entities ICS Trust and ICS International. These are Hong Kong based company formation agents. Orient Investments is part of ICS. Orient Investments set up Long Beach in Anguilla. It held the shares in Long Beach in trust for Nguesso.

In addition to being the President’s son, Nguesso is also responsible for marketing Congo’s oil. He opened a bank account at one of Hong Kong’s largest banks. He had some of the proceeds of Congo’s oil sales deposited to it. He had his personal credit card bills paid from it. He stole millions. He squandered the proceeds on designer shopping in Paris and elsewhere. The UK High Court ruled in 2007 that Nguesso and his company were “unsavoury and corrupt”.

Up to now, the story is the usual one of private greed and public loss. An Anguillian company had been set up for the most despicable and corrupt of reasons: the rape and pillage of an impoverished nation’s resources. Anguilla’s connection might appear at most to be peripheral. The real shame comes when we learn that as far back as 2007 Global Witness wrote to Niguel Streete alerting him to this international fraud. We learn that Mr Streete assured Global Witness that he was dealing with the matter. It appears that it took a full year for Mr Streete to do anything at all. The best he could do, after repeated prodding, was to strike Long Beach off the Register of Companies in July 2008. This action is generally accepted as the administrative equivalent of sweeping the dust under the carpet while shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Nguesso’s exploitation of his people by the use of an Anguillian vehicle is a problem. The solution is for the local regulators and industry representatives to vehemently condemn this abuse of our facilities, and then to take whatever action they can to demonstrate that such conduct will not be acceptable.

Has Anguilla signed legislation making corruption elsewhere in the world an offence in Anguilla?

Anguilla’s company management laws make it compulsory for offshore providers to perform due diligence on prospective clients. Has there been a breach of this law? If there has been, what action needs to be taken?

Why did it take a full year from the time Mr Streete was alerted to the fraud for him to take even this lame and ineffectual action?

Does Mr Streete plan any further action against Orient Investments?

Will disciplinary action be brought against ICS if any is justified?

What is the Anguilla Financial Services Association doing to ensure that international bandits are not permitted to mis-use our jurisdiction?

How ready are we to confront and reassure the coming CFATF, and IMF, and Michael Foot’s review visits and assessments that will take place in the next few weeks?

Failure by Mr Streete’s office to proceed diligently and firmly in this matter will most likely result in further serious damage to Anguilla’s reputation.

Does Mr Streete have any other lawyer representing him besides the A-G’s Chambers? If not, I strongly recommend he find one. He needs competent legal advice.

Let me say that I have not researched Orient Investments. I have no idea who the local agent is. She might be my mother, for all I know. For the purposes of this post, it matters not.

And, finally, for any concern that this post will damage Anguilla’s offshore financial services industry, the answer is that the damage has already been done. These publications I refer to are out there in the public domain. It will only take one of our competitors, the financial services sectors of London or New York perhaps, to bring the story to the attention of Reuters or AP.

Court garb

Judges stop wearing wigs in courts in England. The word wig is short for ‘periwig’. That word derives from the French ‘perruque’. The fashion for men to wear the powdered white wig we know so well came from the court of Louis XIV of France. It spread to English society during the reign of Charles II of Britain in the late 17 century.

When men wearing wigs went out of fashion during the reign of George III, judges and barristers continued to wear them in court. Judges wore the shoulder-length ‘full bottom’ wig until the 1780s. From that period, they adopted for civil trials the smaller wig with a tail at the back. From the 1840s the small ‘bench wig’, used by English judges up to today, took over for criminal trials. A judge’s court wig costs around EC$4,000, while a full-bottomed wig would set you back over $10,000.

Today, 1 October, is the first day for new judicial garb in the UK. Judges will appear in civil courts from now on dressed in a simple robe and without wigs.

The reform was not haphazardly done. There was consultation with the public, the bar, and the judiciary. The conclusion Lord Phillips, the Chief Justice, came to was that wigs make English judges look out of touch. Some even went so far as to say that the old horse hair wigs made judges look ridiculous.

Of course, we in the West Indies long ago gave up wearing wigs to court. We abolished the wig in 1972 for both the bench and bar. A few of the older lawyers still have them. My old barrister's wig only gets used when the High School has a play to put on that needs a borrowed wig.

So, in some ways, the English judges are only now catching up with our judges. But, in other ways they have gone further. Instead of the old fashioned stuff gowns and silk gowns that our judges and lawyers still wear, they will wear a simple European-style black robe fastened with Velcro.

They will continue to wear wigs in criminal trials. They say they hope it gives them a degree of anonymity should they ever meet a convict in the street!

Lawyers

Why do Anguillians not sue lawyers more often? I have credible stories recently about the activities of a lawyer in Anguilla. Two of the statements involved the lawyer helping his client to steal land from two absentee Santo Domingo Anguillian descendents. The third involved tricking a 90 year old terrified woman into signing documents that she had not requested and knew nothing about.

I asked one of my Santo Domingo informants why the attorney had not been sued. She explained that the owner lived in Santo Domingo. That person would have to be the one bringing the court action. That person is an elderly impoverished labourer and lacks the resources to bring an action in Anguilla. My informant did not have the ability to bring the suit for the client. She does not have the necessary first-hand knowledge of the facts that would be needed for admissible testimony. Nor does she have the money to spend on protecting someone else’s land. So, it looks as if the lawyer and his crooked clients may well succeed in successfully stealing the properties. All this assuming that the story I have been told is true and correct.

As for the family of the old lady, their incident relates to the same lawyer. They are not bringing any legal proceedings either. They do not believe that she could have been persuaded by the lawyer to sign over anything that would affect them. I hope they are right. As I explained to them, if they wait until she is dead to protest, it will not be very credible. They would be expected to have sued immediately they learned of the fraud. They will never be able to answer the question, whey did you not bring this claim while the old lady was still alive? It will be difficult for them to refute the allegation that they waited until the old lady died to make this claim. It will look very bad for them.

It is not that we are like some islands of the West Indies where when you complain about an important lawyer you are likely to be awakened by the police in the middle of the night and subject to a vaginal search. Our police would not have any hesitation in arresting any attorney at law in Anguilla. They would be happy to arrest some.

Is it that Anguillians are so respectful towards lawyers that even when we are robbed in this way we cannot believe that the lawyer was to blame? That does not seem very likely knowing the fiercely independent spirit of most Anguillians.

It could not be because we still believe, "It is impossible to get a lawyer in Anguilla to go against another lawyer." That nonsense cannot still be repeated.

Is it that only foreigners have the resources to pursue the crooked lawyer, and we prefer not to throw good money after bad? Surely, most Anguillians know how to find the money to defend themselves.

Is it that we have so little confidence in our judicial system that we believe the judges are part of the problem? Nonsense, this is the OECS, not Barbados.

Could it be that we simply do not know who to complain to? That is unlikely. We know there is the judge, the governor and the Chief Justice. Any of them would kick up a stink on our behalf if any credible allegation was made against an Anguillian lawyer.

Is it that we are too embarrassed to complain? Perhaps we fear we will be thought stupid by our friends and neighbours for having allowed ourselves to have been tricked? That is always possible.

Is it simply a fear of appearing to rock the boat in a small community where everyone is related to everyone else? That is the explanation of much of the acceptance of wrongdoing among our "Christian" leaders. When the pastor runs off with my wife, or the businessman impregnates two of my daughters in the same year, I learn to grin and bear it.

Is it that our expectations of our lawyers and our leaders have fallen so low that we just shrug our weary shoulders and prefer to move on? Almost certainly.

Or, is it just that we have developed such low standards for ourselves that we shrug our own shoulders and wink at another successful trickster among us? I certainly hope not.

Favours

Is it Ever Acceptable for an Attorney to Ask a Minister to Do a Favour for a Client? I do not normally respond to jibes and insults. Any blogger who opens fire in the direction of others must expect to be fired back at. However, there was one comment posted on ‘Big Chief” that requires a response. The anonymous commentator, among other things, said,

“All of you, including Brent, have on occasions requested some Government Minister to address a problem you faced from the Civil Service Staff. To assist you in a situation not to your liking but which may have been in strict compliance with a Law or Regulation. You were all granted your assistance. Its no different now.
Why the sudden ‘Virtue’?”

It is a corrupt form of government that permits a Minister to bend the law for a favoured supporter. It is dangerous and corrupt for a lawyer to ask a Minister for a special favour. That is unacceptable conduct under any system of government. Ours is a small society. There are so many petty spites and hurts. There are so many cousins and supporters who come seeking a favour. It is a particularly pernicious and evil system in a society such as ours.

Our representatives are elected to the House of Assembly to represent all the people’s interests. They select the Executive branch of government from among themselves. The Executive branch develops national policy. They bring that policy to the members of the Legislature as a Bill or Motion. The Legislature debates the Bill, and passes it into law, or rejects it. The Judges adjudicate when there is a dispute between citizen and citizen, or citizen and government. The Public Service reads the law passed by the Legislature. They apply that law impartially and fairly to all citizens. They make no exception, except within the bounds set by the law. That is our Westminster-style Constitution at work in its ideal form.

No Minister is permitted to contact a public servant and tell him or her to make an exception for a favourite of the Minister. Nor, can a Minister ring up a public servant and tell him or her to treat one citizen more severely than another. We are supposed to have a system of government of laws, and not of men. That is how we ensure government works fairly and equitably.

What Brent was complaining about is that in Anguilla we do not have a system of government by law. He was suggesting that here, a particular favoured contractor can go to a Minister and get a work permit approved, when that work permit was disapproved of by the Labour Department officer who was only applying the government’s policy and the law.

We would not have a system of government by law and not of men if a foreign employer were to fire an Anguillian employee for stealing, and the Chief Minister could tell the employer that he either re-hires the employee or he loses his work permit. That is a system of government that Anguillians want to avoid.

That is the system of government they have in Antigua and Grenada and St Vincent. That is how VC Bird and Eric Gairy operated. We do not want it in Anguilla.

I cannot speak for Brent. I can only speak for myself. I practiced law in St Kitts between 1971 and 1976. I never approached a Minister and asked him to make an exception for a client.

I practised law in Anguilla between 1980 and my retirement in 1999. I had many clients who needed licences and permits. I helped them by advising them of their rights and of the procedures under our law. I made the application for them. Then, I left it to the Administration to apply their laws and policies. I expected them to be impartial and fair. I never once approached a Minister of Government for a favour of any kind.

Ministers of Government came to my office for legal services. I charged them a fee. I never performed free legal services for a single one of them. I would not have wanted them to think they owed me a favour.

I would be ashamed to think that a single present-day lawyer in Anguilla behaves otherwise.

The comment in question quoted above is not only not true, it reflects badly on whomsoever wrote it.

Legal Aid

The Anguilla Legal Aid Clinic. ALAC is a service offered by the Anguilla Department of Social Development. The Clinic operates three mornings a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Any person can telephone the front office at 497 2317 and make an appointment. There is a simple Intake form that the client is required to fill out, giving some personal background information. There is an administration charge of EC$10.00. That is it. The attorney will see the client and offer advice on whatever the problem is.

Sanford Richardson is the Director of the Department. When the idea for offering the service was first put to him, he jumped at it. Dr Bonnie Richardson-Lake is the brave Permanent Secretary who took the project to the Hon McNeil Rogers and got it officially sanctioned. First Kishana Rogers, and now Janique Richardson, act as the initial contact at reception. All the staff in the Department have been kind and generous with their time and advice. Several lawyers have taken clients as either pro bono cases or at greatly discounted cost. Thomas Astaphan of Astaphan and Associates, Eustella Fontaine of Caribbean Associated Attorneys, Ricki Camacho of Joyce Kentish and Associates, Cora Richardson Hodge, and Keesha Webster have all provided excellent services to the clients of the Clinic. For this we thank them.

The majority of the problems brought to the clinic fall in the area of family law. These range from child support and custody cases, to adoption and divorce. Family law is closely followed by criminal law. These involve visiting the prison to consult with and advise mostly juvenile offenders. Probate and administration questions compete with land disputes for attention. All in all, it is just like a normal legal office.

The Clinic is just one year old last month. I am inordinately proud of it. But, I missed its birthday celebrations!