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Oliver Hinckson bail issue… I never criticized the magistrate – Chief Justice
Ï never criticized the magistrate for granting bail. In fact, it is unethical for a judge to criticize a magistrate for his or her decision,” Chief Justice Ian Chang said yesterday.
He was responding to an article appearing in the Saturday issue of Kaieteur News under the caption ‘Magistrate wrong to grant Hinckson bail—Chief Justice’.
The Chief Justice said that he never spoke with any reporter. He stated that, even if he had been approached, he would have proffered no comment. Further, he never ruled on a Hinckson bail application before him for the conspiracy charge.
Chief Justice Ian Chan is demanding that Kaieteur News retracts the headline statement and the erroneous contents of the story.
He stated that, in the exercise of his judicial discretion, he adopted a certain approach to Hinckson’s application for pre-trial liberty, and the Chief Magistrate, in her exercise of judicial discretion, took a different approach (assuming that both he and the Chief Magistrate had concurrent jurisdiction in the matter).
Justice Chang pointed out that the High Court was never asked to determine whether the decision of the Chief Magistrate was in contravention of an earlier ruling of the High Court, and therefore there could have been no ruling by the High Court that the decision of the Chief Magistrate was in contravention of an earlier High Court ruling.
The newspaper had reported as follows: “Chief Justice Ian Chang had ruled that Hinckson would not be granted bail on the conspiracy charge.”
Chief Justice Chang said that he never made a decision on the matter, and that he had set August 11 for a continuation of hearings into the bail application. The High Court readily granted bail on the sedition charge.
The decision by the magistrate to grant bail was her right, and it therefore negates any continued hearing in the High Court, the Chief Justice said.
An investigation into the misleading story found that Presidential spokesman Kwame McCoy had telephoned the Kaieteur News office to say that he had been advised by some legal practitioners that the magistrate could not grant bail, since the Chief Justice had ruled on the matter. There was no ruling, so the magistrate was not constrained.
The magistrate granted bail in the sum of $1 million on an application by lawyers from Hinckson after his matters has been reassigned to Principal Magistrate Melissa Robertson-Ogle, who is performing the duties of Chief Magistrate.
Justice Chang cautioned Kaieteur News to be more careful about the sources and accuracy of information before printing news for public consumption. He stated that a higher level of responsibility must be demonstrated by media personnel, and warned that principle must not be sacrificed for profit.
Kaieteur News acknowledges that its source of information was found wanting, and apologises profusely to the Chief Justice for any embarrassment caused to either the Chief Justice or the Principal Magistrate for the inaccurate headline and the inaccurate parts of the news item.
Magistrate Gordon Gilhuys had begun hearing the matters after Principal Magistrate Robertson-Ogle had transferred the matters to him. However, Magistrate Gilhuys became embroiled in a matter that has forced him off the bench until the determination of his matter.
On Thursday June 26 last, Magistrate Gilhuys and a police patrol exchanged gunshots, which ended in Corporal Mark George being shot and seriously wounded. Corporal George remains a patient of the Georgetown Public Hospital.
Because of Magistrate Gilhuys being off the bench, it meant that Hinckson’s matter would have had to have been taken from the very beginning, representing an unnecessary delay in the dispensation of justice.
It is on this ground that the lawyers approached the court for bail on the conspiracy charge. Hinckson has also been granted bail on the arms and ammunition charge.
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