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Silatolu v State [2015] FJHC 462; HAM163.2014 (23 June 2015)

IN THE HIGH COURT OF FIJI
AT SUVA
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

Miscellaneous Case No. HAM163 of 2014

BETWEEN:

TIMOCI SILATOLU

AND:

THE STATE

Counsel: Applicant in Person
Mr.V. Perera for the State

Dates of hearing: 25 May, 9 June 2015
Date of Judgment: 23 June, 2015

JUDGMENT

1. By way of an unsigned handwritten "Notice of Motion" dated 24 September 2014, the applicant purports to make application for habeas corpus and that an order be given to have him released from custody and his conviction quashed. He seeks to rely he says on his rights and freedoms in the Constitution which rights he says have been "fringed" (sic).
   
2. In an accompanying affidavit which has been signed but not sworn before any appropriate officers appears to say that a Supreme Court review judgment on 17 October 2008 had ordered that he be released in March 2012 and that now he has not been released. In the rest of the "affidavit" many of the statements are unintelligible but he appears to claim that the Constitution should afford him immediate release and immediate absolution for his crime.
   
3. This Court has seen the Supreme Court judgment in CAV 002 of 2006 in which the apex Court reviewed the applicant's sentence after his conviction for treason during the 2000 coup. That judgment dealt with conviction only and his application for review in respect of the conviction was dismissed.
   
4. After conviction in the High Court he was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a recommendation only that he serve a minimum term of 9 years. Nine years was not the sentence itself. This sentence was upheld subsequently by the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court. Although the Chief Justice has already told the applicant (not once, but twice) by way of letter this position, the applicant still appears to want to re-litigate the question by this "back door" method of relying on Constitutional redress.
   
5. Not only does the Constitution provide (by section 13(3) for his continued lawful detention, it is not within the jurisdiction of this Court to interfere with the Commissioner of Prison's role in determining when the convict is to be released, having served now the recommended minimum term.
   
6. The prisoner may have alternative remedies of making application to the Commissioner of Human Rights, or in making a renewed application to the parole board.
   

P.K. Madigan
Judge

At Suva
23 June, 2015