A group of TCI lawyers calling itself Advocates Legal Group has today attacked Attorney General Huw Shepheard for issuing a warning last week which they claim amounted to intimidation and threats to freedom of speech.
The Attorney General spoke of irresponsible and scurrilous defamatory attacks on the judiciary and respected public servants by anonymous editors of websites – and in some sections of the media. He warned this might lead to prosecution.
The Attorney General’s intervention followed what he claimed were attacks on the Judiciary, the Registrar of the Supreme Court, Public Servants and on the judicial and legal system as a whole. He said it should be born in mind that the Judges could not respond themselves.
Such behaviour – scandalizing the judiciary – carried a maximum penalty of an unlimited fine and the possibility of life imprisonment. He added that public officers who disclosed confidential information to websites should know that they could face prosecution for unauthorized disclosure and penalties of up to ten years imprisonment – and a fine of up to $50,000.
The Advocates Legal Group say they feel compelled to respond because they found the warning high handed, vexatious and wreaking of intimidation of the highest order. The Constitution gave a guarantee of freedom of expression.
The threat of 10 years imprisonment was not acceptable when the press published and freely expressed factually-based concerns about what they described were ‘manifest flaws and shortcomings’ in the justice system under the present dispensation. The Attorney General’s threat to imprison by invoking the antiquated concept of contempt by way of scandalizing the court failed to recognize the following: Such a law was now obsolete and employed in England years ago as a means of silencing legitimate criticism of judges – but was no longer used there.
The defamed should sue the publisher but not threaten either lawyers or the press. The Group suggested the Attorney General should be more concerned about compromises in the system of justice, selective prosecution, and the impasse between the Governor and the government over VAT. It should also concern itself with the use of prosecutorial powers to pressure confessions and settlements.
The lawyers’ counter statement has been signed by Mark A Fulford, Noel T Skippings, Arthur Hamilton, Ashwood Forbes, and Courtenay Barnett.
