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DEFENDING TAYLOR,
DEFENDING JUSTICE
I
still remember my first international criminal
law class, with Professor Ronald Sklar.
As latecomers jostled for seats close to the
heater, our eminent professor walked in,
distributed the syllabus and asked us to
share our reasons for taking his course.
When my turn came, I didn’t hesitate.
I wanted to be an international criminal lawyer, prosecuting
“bad guys” like Liberian president Charles Taylor, who was
allegedly sponsoring a war in my native Sierra Leone in return
for “blood diamonds.”
I write this from Tanzania, where I’m working as a legal
officer at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).
I could not imagine, as I sat in Professor Sklar’s class, that today
I’d be working on significant international cases. Nor could
I have foreseen that I would not only meet former President
Taylor, but be forced to examine and refine my core beliefs, both
as a person and as an international criminal lawyer.
Before joining ICTR, I was the legal adviser in the Office of
the Principal Defender (OPD) at the Special Court for Sierra Leone
(SCSL). As one of two provisional duty counsel assigned to Taylor
in March 2006, I was among the first lawyers to meet the accused.
Charles Taylor (third from left, with hands covered) being transferred
from the SCSL in Freetown, Sierra Leone to The Hague in June 2006
T H E V I E W F R O M O U T S I D E
After Taylor’s transfer to
The Hague for security reasons
in June 2006, I moved to the
Netherlands and was asked to
establish and run the OPD suboffice
and ensure Taylor’s wellbeing
in detention, all of which
required regular contact with
him. When the trial opened, Taylor
fired his counsel. As Duty
Counsel, I was asked to fill in as
interim counsel until a replacement
could be appointed.
C H A R L E S J A L L O H
B C L / L L B ’ 0 2
Charles Jalloh (centre) with two members of
Taylor’s permanent defence team, Andrew Cayley
and Terry Munyard, in Courtroom II at the
International Criminal Court in The Hague
The quality of the defence afforded
to an accused is a good barometer
by which to measure the quality of
the justice meted out
Though I later resigned from the SCSL for reasons of principle,
I learned that at the end of the day, the outcome of Taylor’s
trial will matter little if history judges that his defence was not
given the time and resources needed to properly defend him. I’ve
learned as well that while it’s easy to hang people like Taylor in the
court of public opinion before he’s even tried in a court of law,
the quality of the defence afforded to an accused is a good barometer
by which to measure the quality of the justice meted out.
As I look back today at my involvement in that historic trial,
I also recall musing about bringing “bad guys” to justice in that
first class with Professor Sklar. After some years in the trenches
of international criminal law, my main lesson so far is that no
case — even those involving unspeakable atrocities — is as black
or white as I once believed.
After McGill, Charles was a Chevening Scholar at Oxford, where he completed a Master’s in
International Human Rights Law (with distinction). He has published widely on the Special
Court for Sierra Leone and authored the Consolidated Legal Texts of the Special Court for
Sierra Leone (Martinus Nijhoff, 2007). A member of the Ontario Bar, his practice experience
includes work as legal counsel in the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Section of
Canada’s Department of Justice. E-mail: jallohc@gmail.com.
FACULTY OF LAW FALL 2008 37