Former INDECOM boss Terrence Williams elevated to King’s Counsel

Former head of the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM), Terrence Williams, has joined the ranks of King’s Counsels (KC) in Jamaica.

The veteran attorney, who started practicing in 1990, was called to the inner bar on Friday morning during a ceremony presided over by Supreme Court Judge, Justice Leighton Pusey.

Williams was joined by family members, friends and colleagues including his wife, Senior Puisne Judge, Lorna Shelly-Williams.

His brother, attorney-at-law Alexander Williams who brought remarks.

President of the Court of Appeal, Marva McDonald Bishop, who also brought remarks; former Director of Public Prosecutions, Kent Pantry, KC; and veteran attorney-at-law Richard Small, KC. Both Small and Pantry also brought remarks.

The Calling to the Inner Bar Ceremony is a time honored tradition for members of the legal fraternity who have distinguished themselves in the field and in service to their country.

Persons are appointed King’s Counsel in Jamaica on the recommendation of several bodies, after which their recommendations are submitted to the Governor General for his assent.

These bodies include; The General Legal Council, King’s Council Committee, Jamaican Bar Association, Cornwall Bar Association and The Advocates Association of Jamaica.

President of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), Adrian Saunders, who joined via video link, was among several speakers who said Williams’ appointment to the rank of King’s Counsel was long overdue.

Others included McDonald Bishop and his brother Alexander.

Saunders told the gathering of eminent attorneys, family and friends of how impressed he was with Williams when the Jamaican practiced in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), after he was appointed that country’s first Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in 2000

. He would remain in the BVI until 2010 when he returned to Jamaica and was appointed the first commissioner of the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM).

Saunders said the elevation of Williams to the ranks of King’s Counsel was “extremely well deserved”.

“If I could be bold enough to say with all due respect to those who have the responsibility of conferring the order, I thought it was frankly overdue,” the CCJ president added.

Saunders pointed to what he described as a memorable case when Williams won a conviction against the BVI’s financial secretary on fraud charges while going up against that country’s, and perhaps the Leeward Islands' most senior counsel, Joseph Archibald.

For her part, McDonald Bishop told Williams that he had the support of the Court of Appeal, in particular because of the “paucity of King’s Counsel gracing us with their presence at that level in the criminal justice system”.

“I think the King’s Counsel have abdicated their role to lead the younger members of this profession and every day I marvel, we have to commend the younger persons (attorneys) who are brave enough, courageous enough ...who’re willing to take up legal aid and to assist us at the appellate level,” she said.

Williams’ brother Alexander, himself an attorney, said it was his “great pleasure to see my brother take silk. It is an achievement well deserved, fitting and overdue”.

“It is well deserved because Terrence, in his career, has embodied the action and spirit of what I would regard as the true core desire of all who become King’s Counsel, which is the pursuit of the interest of justice in service of others and the state,” Alexander added.

He traced his brother’s career from the time he was a clerk of court, to his appointment as the DPP in the BVI, his tenure as the first commissioner INDECOM, and as the current head of Public Law Chambers, a firm of attorneys pursuing human rights cases in Jamaica and across the Caribbean.

When he spoke, Williams, while acknowledging the role family and colleagues played in his development as an attorney, singled out his mother, an educator, for her role in shaping the person he has become.

During his more than three decades of practice, Williams has argued numerous cases, to include, before the Privy Council in London, touching on criminal law, procedure and evidence. 

Between 1995 -2000 he was in private practice; before that he served in the Office of Director of Public Prosecutions in Jamaica (1990 – 1995), rising to Acting Deputy DPP.

Williams has had articles published in international legal journals on money laundering and public corruption. He was Course Director for the Norman Manley Law School Criminal Procedure Programme.