Georgetown: The Commission of Inquiry (CoI) report into the Georgetown Prison riot and resultant deaths has criticised the Guyana Bar Association (GBA) for failing the prison system in Guyana, to which it has a serious obligation.The CoI report, which was formally submitted to President David Granger on June 1, was prepared by Chairman of the Commission, Justice James Patterson and Commissioners Dale Erskine and Merle Mendonca.
Legal practitioners fail to adhere to some of the rules listed in the Legal Practitioners Act – Code of Conduct, and “attorneys-at-law are rarely seen in the prison assisting remand prisoners to get to trial,” the commissioners said.
The rules intended that the Guyana Bar Association members, individually and collectively, “acknowledge and embrace an obligation to care for the protection of those detained in the penal system. To effectively activate this responsibility, the purview of the GBA must encompass both the actual conditions that clients experience, as well as the causes that create those conditions…,” the report stated.
The commissioners said that in the context of the prison CoI, the role of the Guyana Bar Association is of central interest in light of the Code of Conduct under the Fourth Schedule to the Legal Practitioners Act (2012) to which attorneys-at-law are required to adhere.
Rule eighteen of the Code states: “A defence attorney-at-law representing a person who alleges that he has been subject to torture or a cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment while detained by any authority and for any cause should be prepared to raise such allegations before the competent authorities, unless instructed to the contrary by his client.”
“If the client wishes to have such allegations raised, the attorney-at-law must do so fully and fearlessly. He should take a detailed statement from his client and present to the Court of competent authority all the evidence or information to substantiate the allegations and the pursuit of all procedures available to obtain protection and an appropriate remedy for his or her client.”
On April 20, then Guyana Bar Association President, Christopher Ram walked out of the Prison CoI even as the GBA had volunteered its services in representation of the prisoners. Ram was on that day taking the key witness, Deputy Director of Prisons, Gladwin Samuels through cross-examination.
Many of the prisoners during testimony at the CoI had claimed that prisoners on the Capital A Block of the jail were ordered locked in to burn by the Deputy Director of Prisons, Gladwin Samuels, even as the fire blazed, resulting in the death of 17 prisoners and injury of some 30. The report cleared Samuels of the allegations after evidence presented revealed the contrary.
Before storming out of the room, slamming the door, Ram had explained to the Chairman and Commissioners that the GBA had withdrawn its participation because of limited opportunity to cross-examine witnesses due to improper, unprofessional and unethical interruptions by Guyana Prison Service (GPS) Attorney, Selwyn Pieters.
“Just for the record Mr Chairman, I should say that this decision is partly taken because we have not been provided with a proper opportunity to examine witnesses, we are continually interrupted improperly and unprofessionally and unethically, and we believe that the purpose and objective of this Commission is being seriously compromised.”
The CoI report further stated that the rule also states that attorneys-at-law and their professional associations “have an obligation to inform the proper national and international bodies of those activities, which are in direct contravention of the provisions of this rule, and in gross violation of human rights, as described in the United Nations Declaration on the Protection of All Persons From Being Subjected to Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. If necessary as a last resort, they should make such information publicly known.”
It says an attorney should go beyond the formal legal procedures to employ “all procedures available to obtain protection and appropriate remedy for his client,” such as to “inform the proper national and international bodies of those activities, which are in direct contravention of the provisions of this rule and in gross violation of human rights”.
Moreover, attorneys-at-law in Government service are under the additional obligation to “do all they can in their official capacity to promote the incorporation of the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners into the law of the jurisdiction and to see to that the rules and all standards relating to the treatment of detained persons are observed and enforced and that the violations thereof are subject to disciplinary action or criminal prosecution”.
Attorneys can exercise the preventative dimension of the rule by challenging every remand or detention “on the grounds that the overcrowded condition of the prisons per se (without reference to specific treatment metered out to individual prisoners or the particulars of the case) violate both Guyana Constitutional guarantees, as well as the International Conventions against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and Civil and Political Rights, ratified by the Government of Guyana”.
The report explained that cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment can arise from specific action directed against specific individuals, or by conditions which apply to a class of persons indiscriminately.
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