(Trinidad Express) Questions have been raised about how Magistrate Avason Quinlan could continue to sit on the Bench and dispense justice when she is before a disciplinary tribunal on four charges of judicial misconduct in a bail-fixing incident involving two men accused of drug trafficking.
Quinlan, who is married to Deputy Police Commissioner Stephen Williams, was charged with four counts of misconduct of a serious nature by the Judicial and Legal Service Commission (JLSC)—the body responsible for investigating complaints of misconduct against judicial officers—early last year, following a formal complaint that she allegedly violated a judicial canon that prohibited her from hearing a matter without the requisite case information before her and tampered with another magistrate’s remand in custody order.
She is accused of fixing bail with a surety in the sum of $10,000 for each of the two men, four hours after they were denied bail and remanded in custody by her colleague sitting in the Port of Spain drug court, Magistrate Brian Dabideen.
A two-page statement of charges accused Quinlan of improper judicial conduct in a June 29, 2009, bail-fixing incident in the Port of Spain arms and ammunition court. Quinlan has denied all charges of wrongdoing but has been unable to explain how the men, Robert Spencer and Anthony Wilson, who were earlier that day remanded in custody and were being held in the downstairs holding cell in the Port of Spain Magistrates’ Court, came to be in her courtroom.
Dabideen, in a formal complaint filed in July 2009 with Senior Magistrate Lucina Cardenas Ragoonanan, said the men were not represented by counsel when they appeared before him, refused to be fingerprinted and admitted to having criminal records. He ordered that they be remanded into custody until the next day, pending a background check.
When the men appeared before him the following day, they had lawyered up and were out on bail. On checking the paperwork, Dabideen said he discovered that his previous order had been “crossed off” and bail granted with a surety in the sum of $10,000 for each of the two accused.
The tracing report showed that both men had previous drug convictions. One of them, Spencer, had two previous cocaine trafficking charges within the last 15 years and was not entitled to bail under Section Five of the amended 2008 Bail Act.
Dabideen revoked Quinlan’s bail order for both men, which he said were improperly granted. In his affidavit to the JLSC-appointed investigator, Justice Maureen Rajnauth-Lee, the magistrate claimed he was told that Quinlan called the two drug trafficking cases later that same day in courtroom 4B, the arms and ammunition court, “tampered with my endorsements and fixed bail in circumstances where there was no tracing report and prior prosecution’s objection to bail”.
He claimed staffers in the Office of the Clerk of the Peace told him that the prisoners’ case information was taken to courtroom 4B at the request of Magistrate Quinlan and that the transcript of the proceedings clearly showed she knew that the two drug cases were earlier that day adjudicated upon. According to the official court record, both men told Quinlan they had appeared before a magistrate earlier that day.
The transcript (see below) showed this exchange:
Her Worship: “All of you didn’t get bail?”
Robert Spencer: “No, Ma’am.”
Anthony Wilson: “No, well-.”
Her Worship: “All of you get charged for selling nuts or something?”
Robert Spencer: “I was selling beef.”
Her Worship: “And what were you charged for?”
Anthony Wilson: “They charge me for smoke, herbs.”
Her Worship: “You came to court already for the day?”
Anthony Wilson: “Yes.”
Her Worship: “You saw a magistrate already for the day?”
Anthony Wilson: “Ah Indian magistrate.”
Her Worship: “And what he told you?”
Anthony Wilson: “He tell me tomorrow.” Her Worship: “Mr Godson Phillips, either of these two people belong to you by way of clients?”
Attorney Patrick Godson Phillips, counsel for the two accused: “Yes, Ma’am.”
Her Worship: “They appeared in court already?”
Godson Phillips: “Spencer.”
Her Worship: “Both of them said they appeared in a court already.”
Godson Phillips: “Spencer has a matter before the court.”
Her Worship: “No, I mean today, on these charges.”
Godson Phillips: “You all appear in court, sirs?”
Defendants: “Yes.”
The audio recording was stopped at this point at 3.07 p.m., June 29, 2009.
Last week, the one-man disciplinary tribunal appointed by the JLSC to enquire into the allegations of judicial misconduct heard evidence from the clerk in Court 4B, Ria Ramroop, that she was instructed by Quinlan to stop the audio recording. Ramroop was suspended following a record-tampering complaint made by Quinlan after the judicial misconduct charges related to the bail-fixing incident were levelled against her.
And in what is fast turning out to be a messy judicial affair, a staffer from the court reporting services of the judiciary last week testified on oath before Justice Anthony Carmona to evidence of two transcripts, one with headings identifying the players in the exchange of courtroom conversations recorded on the afternoon of June 29, 2009 and the other, with headings that refer to the speakers as “Unknown 1, Unknown 2, Unknown 3, etc”.
The Sunday Express was told that in earlier conversations with other judicial officers, the staffer had stated she was instructed by Quinlan to make a transcript of the recorded court hearing without the identifying headings. The disciplinary tribunal now has before it two versions of the transcript.
Quinlan, in her initial statement of defence to then chief magistrate Sherman McNicholls, dated July 16, 2009, said on the resumption of court hearing at 1 p.m.: “I observed two men sitting in court for most of the afternoon. When I got to the end or near the end of the late court list, those two men were still sitting in court.”
She identified the men as Spencer and Wilson. According to Magistrate Quinlan: “The note-taker enquired from the persons in the process section if those informations has been laid, and the clerk said yes. We waited for the the informations for some time. Eventually, the note-taker left court and went downstairs to get them herself since by that time, there were no more matters on the list.”
Quinlan said that on her note-taker’s return to court 4B, she was told that the paperwork relating to the two men could not be found and that it would be sent to her court as soon as it was located. The presiding magistrate in the arms and ammunition court said: “Eventually, I heard bail applications from the attorney. After hearing attorney’s submission, representation was made from the wife of one of the men. This representation was that he suffers from epilepsy and has severe fits.
The other person was charged for a similar offence. I also heard that application. After the submissions, representations and no objection to bail from the prosecutor, Inspector Morgan, the court made the decision to fix bail in the same amount for both persons. I indicated in open court that I would fix bail with a surety for the two men in the sum of $10,000.”
The Quinlan statement said: “Up to that time, I had no indication that these persons had appeared in the morning and, therefore, I could not have known that any order of remand in custody for tracing and bail was made. When the case sheet came, instead of a clean case sheet, a case sheet from the 4A court came. It was only then that I realised that the men appeared in the morning. I read the magistrate’s endorsement. Since I had already indicated in open court my position with respect to bail, I felt it would have been unfair to revoke bail. I decided, instead, to write my order, bail with a surety in the sum of $10,000. And leave the matters for the following day as the magistrate in the morning had endorsed.”
The explanation Magistrate Quinlan gave for her decision to allow bail was that she sought to “balance the interests of the accused” with that of the State.
She said her colleague, Dabideen, was “mistaken” when he suggested that he brought the matter to her attention since on the following day, June 30, 2009, she approached him for a private chat in the kitchen.
“My reason for speaking to the magistrate was out of courtesy. In my conversation with the magistrate, I explained what transpired on June 29, 2009. I am aware that the magistrate revoked the bail. I saw the exercise of his jurisdiction as part of the normal duties of magistrates since on a daily basis and by virtue of our concurrent jurisdiction, magistrates are called upon to adjudicate on bail orders made by other magistrates. Having fulfilled my intention explaining what had transpired the previous day, we parted ways,” said Quinlan.
She contended that: “Magistrates are aware that the official record of court proceedings are the case sheets—on which magistrates write, and not the information —on which the note-taker replicates the magistrates’ orders.”
In her statement, Quinlan said: “At no time did I tamper with the information by scratching off any endorsement nor did I recall the matters to be heard before me.”
Reached for comment yesterday, Quinlan’s stock response to questions was: “I have absolutely no idea what you are speaking about.”
Dabideen did not respond to calls for a comment, and the JLSC-appointed prosecutor and newly appointed president of the Industrial Court Deborah Thomas declined comment when contacted.
No one was prepared to comment either on the criteria used for judicial suspension or why former deputy magistrate Herbert Charles was suspended from duty at the start of the investigation into a complaint of judicial misconduct made against him. He was subsequently demoted to senior magistrate.
