By Barbara Gayle, Staff ReporterTHE PROBE of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) is expected to start as early as next week and the Public Service Commission (PSC) is desirous of getting the report before year end.
Mr. Justice Lloyd Ellis, a retired Supreme Court Judge who is now chairman of the Police Public Complaints Authority, and Velma Hylton, Q.C., a former Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions are likely to be members of the special four-member panel conducting the probe.
The Ministry of Justice announced last week Thursday that the panel would be chaired by David Muirhead, Q.C., recently retired High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. The other members will be announced today, Michael Cohen, Public Relations Officer in the Ministry of Justice said yesterday.
They will have several issues to determine after prosecutors and DPP Kent Pantry, Q.C., testify. The panel will have to review correspondence between the DPP and the staff, as well as those which the staff and the DPP sent to the Office of the Services Commission and the Public Service Commission.
Some of the issues which the panel will have to consider include: complaints by prosecutors that they have been acting in clear vacancies for more than a year; prosecutors being bypassed for promotion; the reason for the exodus of prosecutors from the office and the effect it has on the justice system; the after-effect of a petition which prosecutors had signed this year, when the DPP sent a letter reverting junior prosecutor Jenes Neathly to her substantive post of Clerk of the Courts; was there a valid reason to take the most senior prosecutor out of the Circuit Courts; are files sent to office being ruled on expeditiously; the allegations of tapping of phones of members of the department; the sudden withdrawal of a prosecutor from the Trelawny Circuit Court, causing the closure of the court; and whether any member of the department has been unfairly evaluated.
The panel will make findings on the evidence adduced before it and then make recommendations to the Commission.
Although the panel is enquiring into the administrative functions of the Office of the DPP, the question still remains what will be the outcome, if the members of the panel find that the breaches were such that they severely affected the administration of justice.
Attorney-at-law Jacqueline Samuels-Brown said that if the Commission finds that there were breaches which affected the administration of justice then there will have to be another Commission of Enquiry.
"In my view that should not be a by-product but should form a central part of the investigation, " Mrs. Samuels-Brown said. She also pointed out that the independence given to the DPP to serve in the interest of justice and fairness to the general public should be issues foremost on the minds of the panellists as they embark on the probe.
