Durrant Pate/Contributor

The Court of Appeal is set to deliver its ruling tomorrow on whether the Constitutional Court was correct in striking down a second extension of Paula Llewellyn as Jamaica’s Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).

The Court of Appeal will hand down its ruling at 9:30 Friday (December 20). A three-member Constitutional Court panel comprising justices Sonya Wint Blair, Simone Wolfe Reece, and Tricia Hutchinson Shelly had struck down the second extension in April. 

The justices ruled that the extension by the government of Llewellyn’s tenure to September 2025 was unconstitutional, null, void, and of no legal effect. They reasoned, that by passing the amendment, the Andrew Holness administration conferred power onto Llewellyn ‘never contemplated’ by the drafters of the Jamaican Constitution. 

The judges held that the framers of the constitution did not empower the holder of the office of DPP, who they describe as a public servant, to decide the terms and conditions of service or on retirement from office.

However, the Holness administration appealed the ruling, arguing that the decision was absurd and totally inconsistent. The government lawyers contended the Constitutional Court should have rejected the constitutional challenge filed by the People’s National Party’s (PNP) Phillip Paulwell and Peter Bunting, who petitioned that that court reject and set aside the extension.