‘Plea bargain should be regulated by guidelines’

What is your take on capital punishment and do you support it?It is 50 years since death penalty was abolished in England. I do not support capital punishment. Now there is no country in Europe which carries out capital punishment because it is contrary to the European convention on human rights.What is your opinion on […]

What is your take on capital punishment and do you support it?
It is 50 years since death penalty was abolished in England. I do not support capital punishment. Now there is no country in Europe which carries out capital punishment because it is contrary to the European convention on human rights.
What is your opinion on plea bargaining?
If it is open and not done in secret and it’s done in good faith, between prosecution and the defense  and the judge, it can be alright, but if it is done secretly where people talk to judges in private, in secret where underhand deals are done then it is not alright.
In effect what you are saying is that there must be guidelines?
Yes, in fact that was what happened in England, it used to exist. Not exactly plea bargaining but a process of dialogue with the judge used to exist informally and without guidelines. Some judges did it but some didn’t. In recent times it is all regulated by guidelines. When that happens I have no problems with it so far it is open and transparent. Free on the part of the defendant who should not be forced into it.
Of what importance do you think is the judiciary to a democratic environment?
The judiciary is crucial to democracy because democracy must have a legal framework for election but it is crucial in other sense because democracies are built on the rule of law and it thrives when you have independent judges decide cases to which the government is parties. The judiciary plays a pivotal role in securing the rule of law and that enables democracy to function if they are allowed to do so in a highly independent way because they have to apply the law and that is what the rule of law is.
You retired as the Vice President of the Court of Appeal in UK October 1, 2014, do you have any regret for ever being on the bench?
No not at all, I enjoyed it and do not have any regret. I said in my speech on the day I retired that I enjoyed every day on the bench and that is true.
These days we talk about globalisation in the practice of law, how do Nigerian lawyers tap into this?
That is not very easy for me to say because it is 20 years since I last practiced law. The way in which lawyers from one country interact with lawyers from another country is something which I’ve got no recent experience.
One way is that there are ways in which older countries can help with training lawyers and that happens to my knowledge. English lawyers go to other countries and train lawyers and that serves a useful purpose but I don’t know if we have come to Nigeria.
Large commercial practice in London is global in reach, they do have offices all over the world even in Lagos and it can happen through that.
When you walk into Nigerian courts and you see the judge taking down evidence in long hand, what do you feel?
That still happens in England too, the evidence in the criminal and civil trials in England is now recorded but it does not stop anybody writing from going along, in the average criminal trials in which judges take notes and are writing down evidence just like the Nigerian judges. There are few of the younger English judges who are very IT competent and they would take notes on the bench on a laptop, they are still in minority.
Information Technology (IT) has revolutionalised the way English courts are run. But we have not progressed as quickly as we could have done. There are all sorts of experiments and models showing what could be done. We see that a lot in the commercial courts, but in criminal courts and in the family courts they are not that hi-tech yet and the facilities exist.
You must have interacted with Nigerian judges, what challenges do you feel they face?
The most striking thing is that their challenges are just the same as anywhere else, just as the challenges confronting English judges.
In my life time, I was a judge for 20 years and a lot of the things I see as challenges in Nigeria now are things we experienced as challenges in England about 10 or 20 years ago.    
Did you pay for tutelage as a young lawyer in England and what is the position now?
Young law graduates and new lawyers don’t pay tutelage but they pay for their university and vocational education. When I was a young lawyer, I paid for my tutelage to a barrister. We had to pay the pupil master for the tutelage but that was about 40 years ago and it has stopped.
On the issue of terrorism, in view of restrictions placed by the constitution on human rights violation and the need in some cases to detain terror suspects for more time than is allowed by the constitution, what is the way out?
I have read your constitutional provisions and they are very similar to law in UK; basic human rights provisions are identical to the human rights provisions in the European convention and the UK.
You have to embrace human rights requirements in fighting terror. While taking usual steps that interfere with individual human rights, you may well be justified in doing it provided you do it to the least extent to achieve the result you seek to achieve.
You may be justified going outside the normal procedure because of the pressing needs to fight terrorism. It is for the courts to decide where the line should be drawn.