Justice David Harris, sitting in the San Fernando High Court, will begin hearing an application for judicial review brought by former chief magistrate Marcia Ayers-Caesar against the Judicial and Legal Service Commission and the President on Thursday (July 27).
In hearing what will be a landmark case, the judge, who has presided over criminal cases in the main, will become a household name.
So who exactly is Harris?
Harris was 52 years old when he took the oath as a Puisne judge from former President George Maxwell Richards on November 1, 2010. He was assigned to the San Fernando High Court.
Harris studied law at the Cave Hill, Barbados campus of the University of the West Indies and at the Norman Manley Law School in Kingston, Jamaica. He was a magistrate and served in the Port-of-Spain, Arima, San Fernando and Mayaro courts. His career, however, spanned service in several Caribbean islands. Harris was the acting chief magistrate in Dominica, Crown Counsel in the Attorney General’s office in the British Virgin Islands and in Dominica and was a prosecutor in the Magistrates Courts of Jamaica.
He is also a former lecturer of the Hugh Wooding Law School, where he taught Ethics, Legal Obligations and Status and Rights.
Harris resigned his post as a High Court Judge in the Antigua and Barbuda High Court in October 2010 and three weeks later, on November 1, he took the oath as a High Court judge in Trinidad.
In the recent past, Harris, sitting in San Fernando, sentenced a Mayaro father to 20 years in jail for committing five sex acts on his four daughters. In the Scarborough Court he also sentenced a man accused of fatally stabbing a secondary school student to 20 years imprisonment.
Attorneys, who spoke with the T&T Guardian on condition of anonymity, said they are not sure Harris is the man to hear the case involving Ayers-Caesar but noted the case fell into his docket because of the random computer selection process.
...Six affected matters may be ready for restart
Of the 20-plus cases that acting chief magistrate Maria Busby-Earle Caddle said she would have to re-start following the Marcia Ayers-Caesar fiasco, six may be ready to start afresh after the transcripts to them were made available yesterday.
Early last month, Busby-Earle Caddle said she had been tasked with restarting the matters as Ayers-Caesar’s was no longer a magistrate. Many accused and their attorneys objected, however, saying she had no legal authority to do so. But the lawyers and their clients still requested the transcripts of the court proceedings despite their objection. The transcripts will be used once the matters restart and will be re-read into the record as official evidence to prevent each witness from having to testify and be cross-examined a second time, ultimately delaying the already drawn out cases.
Director of Public Prosecutions Roger Gaspard SC was absent from court yesterday. He too requested the transcripts of the cases now in limbo, but was not of the view they had to be restarted in the absence of any official documentation from the Judiciary saying Ayers-Caesar had resigned. Gaspard can avoid a restart of the preliminary enquiries and indict the accused (sending the matters to the High Court) or set them free. He added that without any paper trail proof that Ayers-Caesar was no longer part of the magistracy his hands were essentially tied.