Liberia: Bail Denied, The Former Vice President’s Lawyers Weigh A Trip To The Supreme Court And a Long Legal Fight

MONROVIA – For three weeks, the most important document at Jewel Howard-Taylor’s home has been a visitors’ log.

Every person who passes her gate is written down. Police officers stand watch around the clock. She may step outside only when the court has approved a trip to the hospital in advance. The former vice president, once second in line to lead the country, now needs a judge’s permission to see her doctor.

On Thursday, her lawyers went to court hoping to change that. They left with the same restrictions in place and a stinging rebuke from the bench.

By evening, the defense team had gathered in Monrovia to decide what comes next. For lawyers who have shifted strategy more than once in five weeks, the choices are narrowing. The road now leads up Capitol Hill, to the Supreme Court.

“We believe that she is eligible”

Atty. Gbawu Kowou, one of her lawyers, said the defense would take its case to the Justice in Chambers.

“The court argued that the crime extended up to 2026 based on the allegation that she received US$15,000. We disagree,” he told FrontPageAfrica. “The defense believes the court did not properly apply Liberia’s law on bail and pretrial detention, and that is the reason we are filing a petition for certiorari before the Justice in Chambers. We believe that she is eligible for bail.”

The papers are ready, he said. The team hopes to file on Friday, September 25, or by Monday, September 28 at the latest. Cllr. Kabina Ja’neh and former Associate Justice Lavalah Supuwood will lead the fight.

And the woman at the center of it? “The Vice President has been briefed on the latest decision from the court,” Kowou said.

A judge’s rebuke

The defense’s argument was simple. The 2023 Controlled Drugs and Substances Act makes the charges against her grave and non-bailable. But her lawyers said the conduct she is accused of happened in 2021 and 2022, before the law existed. A law, they argued, cannot reach back in time.

Judge Ousman F. Feika of Criminal Court “C” turned to the defense’s own paperwork to answer them.

Attached to their motion was the Writ of Arrest. It alleges that she received US$15,000 from the cartel through Sheikh Bashiru Kante as recently as August 2026. If true, the judge reasoned, the alleged conduct did not stop in 2022. It ran well past the new law.

Then he went further. He accused the defense of ignoring a major part of its own exhibit and warned that such conduct runs against the lawyers’ code of ethics. It is rare for a judge to scold counsel this way in a pretrial ruling.

Her lawyers noted their exception and told the court they would “take advantage of the statute controlling.” In Liberian courtrooms, everyone knows what that means: we’ll see you upstairs.

The road upstairs

The tool they will likely use is a writ of certiorari. Just last month, on August 28, the Supreme Court ruled in the Capitol arson case that certiorari is the proper way to challenge a trial judge’s interlocutory ruling. Chief Justice Yamie Quiqui Gbeisay explained that it lets the high court review a lower court that has jurisdiction but is alleged to have acted irregularly or contrary to law.

Recent history offers the defense both hope and caution.

In March 2025, Justice in Chambers Ceanneh Clinton Johnson overturned a Criminal Court “C” decision revoking the bail of Peach Bility, son of Representative Musa Hassan Bility, and sent him home.

Six years earlier, it went the other way. Justice Joseph Nagbe granted the State’s petition and overturned a trial judge who had found grounds to admit murder suspect Oliver Dillon to bail. Dillon stayed behind bars.

A filing could also buy time. In a 2024 case, the State’s certiorari petition automatically halted scheduled Criminal Court “C” proceedings until a conference with the Justice in Chambers. A similar pause here would freeze action before Judge Feika while the high court looks at his ruling.

Whatever the outcome, the question reaches beyond one defendant. The Justices may have to decide whether a no-bail law passed in 2023 can apply to conduct that allegedly began before it. Judge Feika’s order leaned on the continuing nature of the alleged offense and did not squarely answer that argument. The defense is likely to press the gap.

Waiting on the grand jury

Other fights remain unresolved. Judge Feika still has to rule on defense motions to quash the arrest writ, a habeas corpus petition and a motion to suppress evidence.

The defense has already shown it is willing to change course. On September 17, it withdrew the preliminary examination before Magistrate L. Ben Barco, giving up an early chance to test the State’s evidence. That evidence includes WhatsApp messages and audio recordings investigators say came from Kante’s phone. No one has yet heard them played in court.

And over all of it hangs the grand jury. Judge Feika can decide whether she goes home or stays confined. He cannot put her on trial without an indictment, and more than a month after her arrest, there is none.

Her allies have noticed. Lenn Eugene Nagbe, chief of staff to former President George Weah, said the government’s failure to indict her raises questions about the strength of its case.

The August Term of Court is in its 39th day of jury sitting. The clock is running.

The bigger picture

Her case sits at the heart of Liberia’s widest drug investigation. It began with a cocaine seizure valued at about US$317 million and has reached into the police, the intelligence services and the prison system.

Her party, the Coalition for Democratic Change, calls it political persecution. The government says she is presumed innocent and will have her day in court.

She was released from Monrovia Central Prison on medical grounds on September 4. The court has warned she could be sent back if her health improves significantly.

So she waits. Behind her gate, under guard, with each visitor’s name written in a book, while her lawyers climb the hill to argue that the case against her belongs to 2021, and the State insists it runs right up to this summer.