By AZARD ALI Saturday, October 24 2009

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Justice Prakash Moosai...

THERE are more courts and attorneys in Trinidad and Tobago, but $3,500 is pittance for a lawyer to represent accused persons on criminal charges, said a High Court Judge yesterday.

Justice Prakash Moosai condemned the continued payment of such a sum by the Legal Aid and Advisory Authority while presiding in the San Fernando High Court, saying that “something must be done soon” before the system collapses.

Moosai was at the time fixing trial dates for several accused persons on criminal charges, but most of them did not have attorneys to represent them.

Attorney Rupert Frank, Annusha Panday, Nicola Panday, Mewalal Chatoor and Stephen Boodram, were representing accused persons seated in the dock. Frank said that instructing attorneys’ fee from Legal Aid of $3,500, was grossly insufficient.

Moosai intervened and expressed the view that the complaint from attorneys was legitimate. He said the sum should not be less than $6,000. “There was a time when senior attorneys used to complain they were not getting enough Legal Aid briefs. It is now the other way around. The sum of $3,500 is definitely too small to engage the services of instructing attorneys in trials which sometimes last five and six weeks,” Moosai said.

Moosai said that the criminal justice system is an important facet in the battle against crime.

The judge pointed out to the attorneys present that Legal Aid was yet to appoint an attorney in a criminal case pending since September 10, 2008. “Not in this day and age. Something has to be done,” Moosai added.

He called upon attorneys to take up the issue with the Law Association and the Criminal Bar Association, even if it means writing to the Legal Aid and Advisory Authority on the matter.