Sherman McNicolls is found guilty of bias in a trial where Panday is a defendant. Now he is adjudicating in another trial (the airport enquiry) where once again Panday (and friends) are involved. How can this be? Sherman should feel some shame and recuse himself, because bias just does not disappear. But Shermie has never felt shame, either then or now.
Justice Ventour, along with the JLSC have further damned Shermie. By refusing to testify as a witness in the CJ affair, Shermie stepped over the boundaries of his position: in the matter involving the CJ...
...the Chief Magistrate may have fallen into serious error in failing to appreciate his role in the criminal proceedings. He was simply a witness who happened to be the Chief Magistrate. As a witness he was not being called upon to render any judgment based on "precedent and facts." As a witness he was not the one to decide which of the proceedings (whether impeachment or criminal) was to take precedent over the other. At the material time he was not wearing the hat of Chief Magistrate and therefore it was not his responsibility nor was it within his power to decide whether it was "improper both in principle and in law to allow for the cross examination of evidence in two separate proceedings which were at roughly the same stage in their development." Sadly enough, that was not his call. (Ventour's report)
Same as I've been saying all along.
So now that Shermie is clearly in multiple breaches of law, is he being treated the same as CJ Sharma? Definitely not. Unlike Anand Ramlogan, I am unwilling to think that race is involved but to use an old and apt phrase there is indeed a nigger in the woodpile. For some untold reason, the JLSC in the form of Lionel Jones and Jean Permanand thinks that since Shermie is sitting in the Piarco Inquiry he is not in a position to be suspended. The sane voice, Selby Wooding is quelled.
On the Ventour report, Wooding said: "It could be concluded from the report that the actions of the Chief Magistrate amounted to conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice". He said such a finding was not inconsistent with the facts presented in the case against McNicolls.
My personal view is that Shermie is to be suspended forthwith. Not because of his race, proven bias etc, but because he has been verified as committing a criminal offence and the law MUST be applied equally above board, for ALL. To do any less is to make a mockery of the entire legal system, the judiciary and the public, whose faith is that justice will be done.
My view is supported by Selby Wooding, chairman of the JLSC.
Wooding, however, made it clear that "he felt very strongly that one should not have a Chief Magistrate who had ostensibly made a mickey mouse out of the administration of justice, continuing to preside in court while allegations of misconduct were under investigation".
