![\"\"](\"https:\/\/dominicanewsonline.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/ECSC-Court-ruling-642x334.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Dominica News Online (DNO) has been informed by a well-placed source that High Court judge, Birnie Stephenson, has recused herself from an elections petition case which was filed by the United Workers Party (UWP) after the 2019 general election.<\/p>\n
The UWP filed the petitions 21 days after the December 6th election, challenging the results in 10 constituencies.<\/p>\n
Justice Stephenson was to have ruled on an application from the government to have the matter struck out.<\/p>\n
Opposition leader, Lennox Linton, had called for Stephenson’s recusal, claiming that her record of performance in the court system of Dominica against those who have brought matters against the Roosevelt Skerrit administration over the many years that she\u2019s been here, requires that she recuses herself from this strikeout application from the government.<\/p>\n
\u201cBernie Stephenson cannot be fair; she cannot be impartial; she cannot be independent; she cannot be objective where the dispensation of justice as it involves the United Workers Party in Dominica is concerned and she should recuse herself from this matter,\u201d Linton insisted.<\/p>\n
The Opposition Leader was concerned that Stephenson, “even though she is in the criminal jurisdiction of the court,” was being asked by her superiors to do the case.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a judge responsible for the civil jurisdiction of the High Court here who is being bypassed to look at this case to hand it over to Bernie Stephenson instead,\u201d Linton contended.<\/p>\n
Senior Counsel, Anthony Astaphan, in response to Linton’s statements, defended Justice Stephenson by pointing out that she had ruled in favour of\u00a0 Parliamentary Representative for the Salisbury Constituency, Hector \u2018Spags\u2019 John and all the other UWP supporters who were charged with rioting.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow does a man go out there and attack a judge and does not mention that the judge ruled in the favor of the United Workers Party in the rioting cases out of Salisbury, but that the court of appeal overturned her and sent it back to the Magistrates Court for prosecution?\u201d Astaphan asked.<\/p>\n
However, Linton is not alone in his opposition to the involvement of Stephenson in that case. Former president of the Concerned Citizens Movement and activist, Loftus Durand, made a public a letter which he was planning to send to the Chief Justice of the Eastern Caribbean \u00a0Supreme Court (ECSC) requesting that Justice Stephenson be replaced in that matter by another justice of the ECSC.<\/p>\n
Durand cites, as one of the reasons for his request, Justice Stephenson’s eleven-year posting in Dominica. He claims that “by having such a
\na long stint in Dominica, Justice Stephenson has become too involved and engrossed in the country\u2019s affairs.”<\/p>\n
Durand also made reference to Justice Stephenson’s track record on ruling on political matters in Dominica, suggesting that a large
\nmajority of her judgements has been in favour of the current government.<\/p>\n
“Therefore, we are humbly requesting that another of the Court\u2019s Justices be brought in and assigned to the upcoming matter. We are informed that this is a practice that is well established by the Court,” he argued in his letter and mentioned a number of cases in which this had happened.<\/p>\n
Durand has since revealed that Justice Stephenson recused herself before the letter could be sent to the ECSC Chief Justice.<\/p>\n
The hearing for the government’s strikeout application is carded for June 10, 2020.<\/p>\n
The general election was held on Friday 6th, December 2019, with the Dominica Labour Party (DLP) winning 18 seats out of 21 seats to secure a landslide victory. The UWP got the remaining 3 seats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dominica News Online (DNO) has been informed by a well-placed source that High Court judge, Birnie Stephenson, has recused herself from an elections petition case which was filed by the United Workers Party (UWP) after the 2019 general election. The…","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":249706,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","footnotes":""},"categories":[19,235,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-250759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime-court-law","category-homepage-carousel","category-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n