Former Deputy Attorney General Alfred Tuah-Yeboah has maintained that lawyers handling substantive cases should be consulted and give their consent before proceedings are scheduled during the legal vacation.
His comments follow the decision by Chief Justice Paul Baffoe-Bonnie to allow the cases involving former Director-General of the National Signals Bureau (NSB), Kwabena Adu-Boahen, and former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National Food and Buffer Stock Company Limited (NAFCO), Hanan Abdul-Wahab, to proceed during the legal vacation.
Lawyers for the accused persons had petitioned the Chief Justice over warrants authorising the judges handling the cases to sit as vacation judges and had asked for the proceedings to be deferred until after the legal vacation.
Speaking on the Channel One Newsroom on Tuesday, August 11, Mr Tuah-Yeboah said the established practice had been for judges intending to hear substantive matters during the vacation to first engage the lawyers involved.
According to him, once the lawyers consented to the arrangement, the Chief Justice could then issue a warrant authorising the judge to sit during the vacation.
“It is a special practice, that if a judge wants to hear a substantive matter during the vacation, he discusses with the lawyers involved. After he receives their consent, the next step is to grant that judge a warrant to sit in the vacation and hear substantive matters,” he said.
Mr Tuah-Yeboah argued that the current arrangement, in which the judges were issued warrants without prior consultation with the lawyers involved, departs from the established practice.
“In this particular instance, the lawyers were not involved, the judges were given a warrant by the CJ, and there is an imposition of a vacation hearing on the lawyers involved in this matter,” he said.
He stressed that the issue was not whether the Chief Justice had the authority to issue warrants for judges to sit during the legal vacation, but whether lawyers should be involved in the process before substantive matters are scheduled for hearing.
“We are not saying that the CJ doesn’t have the right to issue a warrant for a judge to sit in a vacation. The lawyers involved must be part of the decision-making process, so the judges will be very sure that, yes, we want to hear this matter in the vacation, we agree, then the CJ gives the warrant so the judges go ahead to hear the matter,” he said.
