Al­most one year af­ter dozens of pris­on­ers were trans­ferred from the Max­i­mum-Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca to Teteron Bar­racks un­der the 2025 State of Emer­gency, the le­gal­i­ty of those moves is now be­fore the High Court, with at­tor­ney Criston J Williams ar­gu­ing that the case could be­come an­oth­er ma­jor test of the con­sti­tu­tion­al lim­its on ex­ec­u­tive pow­er.

The chal­lenge fol­lows a rul­ing by Jus­tice West­min RA James last Fri­day grant­i­ng re­mand pris­on­er Earl Richards leave to pur­sue ju­di­cial re­view pro­ceed­ings against the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al over his trans­fer to the mil­i­tary fa­cil­i­ty and the con­di­tions un­der which he was de­tained.

Richards, rep­re­sent­ed by Williams and at­tor­ney Aaron Lewis, con­tends his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights were in­fringed af­ter he was moved from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison to Teteron Bar­racks be­fore the fa­cil­i­ty had been law­ful­ly des­ig­nat­ed as a prison. The claim al­so al­leges that sub­se­quent leg­isla­tive mea­sures could not ret­ro­spec­tive­ly val­i­date what was un­law­ful at the time.