Forbes v Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago
| Jurisdiction | UK Non-devolved |
| Judge | Lord Millett |
| Judgment Date | 15 May 2002 |
| Neutral Citation | [2002] UKPC 21 |
| Court | Privy Council |
| Docket Number | Appeal No. 2 of 2001 |
| Date | 15 May 2002 |
[2002] UKPC 21
Present at the hearing:-
Lord Slynn of Hadley
Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead
Lord Hobhouse of Woodborough
Lord Millett
Lord Scott of Foscote
Privy Council
[Delivered by Lord Millett]
On 12th November 1985 the appellant, together with his wife Valerie Forbes and a relative Glen Cooper, were arrested and charged under section 4(1) of the Narcotics Control Ordinance No. 27 of 1961 with being in possession of 600 grammes of canabis sativa (marijuana).
On 14th April 1987 the appellant was convicted at the Princes Town Magistrates Court and sentenced to five years imprisonment with hard labour. His wife was also convicted; Glen Cooper was acquitted. On the following day the appellant gave notice of appeal and applied for bail. He was granted bail subject to conditions on 15th November 1988, that is to say some 19 months after his conviction, and he was duly released from custody.
The magistrate gave no reasons for his decision at the time and has never done so. Under section 130A of the Summary Courts Act Chapter 4:20 as amended a magistrate is bound to draw up and sign a statement of the reasons for his decision within 60 days of the giving of the notice of appeal against it.
The appeal did not come on for hearing until 24th March 1997, that is to say nearly ten years after the appellant's conviction. By then the magistrate was no longer on the bench.
The Court of Appeal examined the record to see if there was sufficient evidence upon which the appellant could properly have been convicted. It found that there was and dismissed the appeal, but ordered the sentence to be varied to one of 18 months' imprisonment with hard labour. This was because the sentence imposed by the magistrate exceeded the maximum authorised by the law in force at the time of the offence, such maximum having been later increased. Pursuant to the provisions of section 150(2) of the Summary Courts Act the Court of Appeal ordered the term of imprisonment to commence from the date on which it gave its decision.
The appellant obtained special leave to appeal to the Privy Council from the judgment of the Court of Appeal, and on 24th February 1998 the appeal was allowed and his conviction quashed. The reasons for the Board's decision were given on 16th March 1998 and are reported as Clinton Forbes v Maharaj (1998) 52 WIR 487. The Board quashed the appellant's conviction because of the magistrate's failure to comply with his statutory duty to state the reasons for his decision. It considered that the case did not provide an appropriate occasion on which to decide whether such a failure would always prove fatal to a conviction, but considered that the Court of Appeal had applied the wrong test. In Dean Cedeno v Logan ( unreported), 18th December 2000, the Board held that the failure of the magistrate to give reasons does not necessarily invalidate the conviction; and in that case, where the reasons for his decision were obvious without being stated expressly, the conviction was upheld.
Meanwhile on 3rd October 1997 the appellant had issued a constitutional motion for a declaration that the failure or refusal of the Magistrate to give reasons deprived him of his constitutional rights to (i) due process (ii) the protection of the law (iii) a fair hearing and (iv) procedural provisions necessary for giving effect to such rights; and for an award of monetary compensation.
On 23rd March 1998, that is to say after the Board had delivered its reasons for quashing his conviction, the appellant issued a second constitutional motion for a declaration that the Court of Appeal's erroneous approach to the consequences of the magistrate's failure to give reasons deprived him of his constitutional rights (i) not to be deprived of his liberty except by due process and (ii) to the protection of the law; and for an award of monetary compensation. The two constitutional motions were consolidated and ordered to be heard together.
Following the appellant's conviction he was imprisoned on 15th April 1987. Since he had already given notice of appeal he was treated, not as a convicted prisoner, but as an accused person on remand in custody. He was placed in a special area set aside for appellants and treated as a First Division prisoner. Having obtained bail he was released from prison on 29th or 30th November 1988. Following the order of the Court of Appeal he was again taken into custody on 24th March 1997, this time as a convicted prisoner serving a sentence of imprisonment with hard labour. He was released on 26th February 1998 following the order of the Board setting aside the judgment of the Court of Appeal and quashing his conviction.
The constitutional motions were heard by Lucky J who dismissed them. He did so on the ground that the magistrate's failure to give reasons and the approach adopted by the Court of Appeal to the question whether this invalidated the conviction were errors of law which were remediable within the judicial system itself and which, having been remedied on appeal, were not susceptible of forming a continuing basis for constitutional relief. The appellant's appeal to the Court of Appeal was dismissed for substantially the same reasons.
Their Lordships would begin by observing that the statutory duty of the magistrate to state the reasons for his decision and the right of a convicted person to be provided with such a statement arises only once a notice of appeal has been given. The statement is, therefore, required for the purpose of the contemplated appeal. It follows that the magistrate's failure to provide the appellant with such a statement does not of itself vitiate the trial which has already taken place or invalidate...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Omar Anderson v R
...having been tried and convicted in a fair trial by an impartial tribunal, and that his convictions have been upheld (see Forbes v Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago [2002] UKPC 21]). In Forbes v Attorney General, the appellant who had previously had his conviction overturned by the Pr......
-
The Hon Mrs Portia Simpson-Miller and Others v Attorney-General and DPP
...in Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj v Attorney-General of Trinidad and Tobago (No. 2) [1979] AC 385 and as restated in Clinton Forbes v The Attorney-General of Trinidad and Tobago [2002] UKPC 21 at paragraph 18. In Maharaj, Lord Diplock at page 399 cautioned: ‘In the first place, no human right or ......
-
Attorney-General v Chapman Sc
...relief does not ordinarily offer an alternative means of challenging a conviction or a judicial decision … 42 In Forbes v Attorney-General of Trinidad and Tobago, Lord Millett applied Lord Diplock's stricture that the remedy was not available simply for error able to be corrected in the app......
-
Kemmy v Ireland
...FLR 63; Independent Publishing Company Ltd v AG of Trinidad and Tobago [2004] UKPC 26 ; Forbes v Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago [2002] UKPC 21 ; Simpson v AG [1994] 3 NZLR 667 ; Upton v Green (No 2) [1996] 3 HRNZ 179; Brown v Attorney General [2005] 2 NZLR 405 ; McKean v AG [2008] ......
-
Constitutional damages, procedural due process and the Maharaj legacy : a comparative review of recent Commonwealth decisions (part 1)
...where there has been a fundamental48Independent Publishing Co (n 45) para 88 per Lord Brown.49[2002] 1 AC 854 (PC).50Id 870 para 24.51[2002] UKPC 21 (PC).52Id para Constitutional damages, procedural due process and the Maharaj legacy 267subversion of the rule of law that resort to constitut......