Former UN judge urges reform, says 'it should not be possible for Jamaican court to overturn a chief justice'

Former United Nations judge Patrick Robinson has called for constitutional reform to prevent Jamaican courts from overturning a chief justice’s rulings. It follows the Court of Appeal’s decision to quash a 2019 murder conviction after ruling that actions of Chief Justice Bryan Sykes denied the then accused man a fair trial.

“We must put an end to the legal oddity of the possibility of a decision of the chief justice being overturned by the Court of Appeal," wrote Robinson in an opinion piece published in The Sunday Gleaner. He, however, did not reference last month's court of appeal decision. "It should not be possible for a Jamaican court to overturn a decision of the chief justice."

Robinson is a former president of the UN International Criminal Tribunal and former judge of the International Court of Justice. He also endorsed Chief Justice Bryan Sykes’ controversial push for replacing jury trials with judge-only trials in certain matters.

In December, the Court of Appeal quashed a 2019 murder conviction after ruling that Sykes "descended into the arena" and compromised the fairness of the trial. "The applicant was denied a fair trial," the court said.

Robinson argued that the system should be reformed to prevent a chief justice from being overruled by the Court of Appeal.

"The chief justice is the chief judge of Jamaica and is, therefore, chief among all judges, including those in the Court of Appeal. .... On appointment, the chief justice should sit in the Court of Appeal as its president."

The Court of Appeal is Jamaica's second highest court. The nation's final court is the London-based Privy Council, which Robinson said is "another legal oddity of which we need to rid ourselves".

Under the Constitution, the chief justice is the head of the judiciary, one of three branches of government.

However, the chief justice sits in the Supreme Court, which is immediately below the Court of Appeal. The Constitution also outlines that the chief justice, as head of the judiciary, is a member of the Court of Appeal but "shall not sit in the Court of Appeal unless there are at least four other judges sitting and unless he has been invited so to sit by the president of the [Court of Appeal]".

In the December judgment, Justices Jennifer Straw, Nicole Foster-Pusey, and Vivene Harris overturned the conviction of Conroy Stephenson for the 2014 murder of Nicholi Nesbeth and entered a verdict of acquittal.

While the jury’s verdict was not “palpably wrong” based on the evidence, the appellate court concluded that Sykes’ “excessive cross-examination” of defence witnesses went far beyond clarification, effectively inviting the jury to disbelieve the defence.

“Unfortunately, the robust questioning … could have severely undermined McIntosh’s credibility and ought not to have been embarked upon in the circumstances,” the Court of Appeal said of Sykes' questioning of defence witness Sarafina McIntosh.

“The learned Chief Justice did not merely comment upon McIntosh’s evidence. He descended, quite extensively, into the arena to elicit evidence that ought to have been left to the prosecution”.

The appellate judges said the interventions “invite the jury to disbelieve the evidence for the defence … in such strong terms that it cannot be cured by the standard direction that the facts are for the jury”.

The Court of Appeal concluded that a retrial, proposed for 2026 at the earliest, would be contrary to the interests of justice given delay, cost, and uncertainty of witnesses.

Sykes was appointed Jamaica's eight chief justice in 2018.

Editor's Note: Subsequent to the publication of this story, Judge Robinson said the story misrepresented his views. He issue a statement.

Judge Patrick Robinson's Full Response

"I am obliged to respond to the on-line story of the 7th January, 2026, which has a side note, “former UN Judge urges reform, says ‘it should not be possible for Jamaican Court to overturn a Chief Justice’”. The writer sates that I have called for “constitutional reform to prevent Jamaican courts from overturning a chief justice’s ruling. It follows the Court of Appeal appeal’s decision to quash a 2019 murder conviction after ruling that actions of Chief Justice Brian Sykes denied the then accused man a fair trial”.

This is a complete misrepresentation of the last paragraph of the article, published January 4, 2026, captioned, “Analysing Common Law Adversarial and Civil Law Inquisitorial Legal System”.

There are three key sentences in that paragraph: “The Chief Justice is the chief judge of Jamaica and is, therefore, chief among all judges, including those in the Court of Appeal. It should not be possible for a Jamaican court to overturn a decision of the chief justice. On appointment, the chief justice should sit in the Court of Appeal as its president”. When these three sentences are read together, it is crystal clear that what I am saying is that if the chief justice takes what I consider to be his rightful place in the Court of Appeal as its president, it would not be possible for any Jamaican court to overrule him or her, although, of course - and this is acknowledged in the last sentence of the paragraph - the Court of Appeal can be overruled by what is now our highest Court, the United Kingdom Privy Council, a position that I hope will change soon.

In Barbados the chief justice is ex-officio a judge of the High Court, but sits in the Court of Appeal as its president. The position is the same in Trinidad and Tobago. In fact, my information is that in CARICOM it is only the Bahamas that has a structure similar to ours, in which the Chief Justice sits in the Supreme Court, where of course, he or she can be overruled by the Court of Appeal.

I was not aware of the 2019 Court of Appeal judgement that overruled a murder conviction in which the trial judge was Chief Justice Sykes. My position, which is one of principle, is that the chief justice, as the chief judge in Jamaica, should sit in the highest court in Jamaica which is the Court of Appeal, not the Supreme Court.

I also wish to clarify that in the last paragraph of my article I addressed the office of chief justice, and not any specific holder of that office.

In sum, the writer of the on-line comment fell into error by focusing on one sentence in the paragraph to the exclusion of reading the paragraph as a whole, in particular, sentence that on appointment, the chief justice should sit in the Court of Appeal."

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