How many more must die?

Deputy Chief Magistrate Mark Wellington did the correct thing by dismissing the case against Anita Annamunthodo. After 11 months, the DPP had failed to appoint a State Counsel to prosecute this case, and the investigating officer, PC Hamilton, never had the courtesy to grace the court with his presence.

In balancing the scales of justice, the magistrate could not ignore the fact that Anita was in jail awaiting trial, because she could not raise the bail of $7,500.

The law is that she must be presumed innocent until proven guilty, and it is unacceptable for any citizen to be detained at the State’s pleasure without a trial.

What is more, the magistrate would have issued a stern warning to the prosecution to get its act together, or else on the last few occasions when the case was called. The prosecution would have had advance notice and warning that unless a lawyer was appointed and PC Hamilton was present on the next occasion, the case would be thrown out.

While billions of dollars are being spent on a Carnival centre, a new residence for our Prime Minister and a stadium in Tarouba, the criminal justice system is in tatters. We need twice as many magistrates and courts, a competent professional police service, more attorneys in the office of the DPP and, of course, a DNA lab.

To be fair, the DPP has been complaining about starvation for quite some time. When asked to respond to the long delay of some eight months in the filing of the murder indictment against Ryan Sagar for the June, 2003, murder of Debbie Ann Ramnath, Mr Henderson complained about understaffing, and said the delay was caused by “a severe lack of resources.”

The judiciary needs to do its part in kicking the State in the right place. Far too many judges and magistrates continuously and endlessly adjourn cases out of an understanding for the “position of the State.”

All are equal before the law, and it is not the function of the judiciary to sympathise with the State. By so doing, they might nurture an unconscious bias that is conducive to the kind of maladministration and inefficiency that have come to characterise the entire public service.

It is a simple question of prioritising public expenditure and understanding that the administration of justice must come before luxuries such as a Carnival centre, a diplomatic centre at the new residence of the PM, and the Tarouba stadium.

The Privy Council took the bull by the horns when Caribbean courts were sympathising with the massive backlog of cases that led to the ridiculous state of affairs that appeals by prisoners, who were sentenced to death, took as long as seven to ten years to surface.

In an excellent piece of social engineering, it said: “Their Lordships are very conscious that the Jamaican Government faces great difficulties with a disturbing murder rate and limited financial resources at its disposal to administer the legal system. Nevertheless, if capital punishment is to be retained, it must be carried out with all possible expedition. Capital appeals must be expedited and large legal aid allocated to an appellant at an early stage. The aim should be to hear capital appeals within 12 months of conviction.”

This benchmark set by the Privy Council was greeted with a roar of approval by regional practitioners, who were fed up with the contemptuous treatment of the administration of justice when it came to allocation of scarce resources.

Locally, in the Maha Sabha radio licence case, Justice Carlton Best rejected the attempt by the State to rely on public service bureaucracy by commenting: “The lack of staff and inefficiency in the public service, the change of venue (of the ministry), political directorate and policy should not be allowed to stand as justification for the differential treatment of the Maha Sabha.”

The sodomised, mutilated, murdered bodies of babies Emily Annamunthodo, Sean Luke, Radha Pixie Lakhan and Akiel Chambers are a constant reminder of why we need an effective and expeditious criminal justice system.

We failed them while they endured a lifetime of rape, torture and humiliation, and now, we are failing them again, as we deny the justice their memories deserve. How many more must die before we fix the leaks in the justice system that let so many off the hook without a fair trial?

By doing the right thing, Mr Wellington has focused the spotlight on the real issues that plague the criminal justice system. In an election year, when $600 million is going to rush through the system like a dose of salts, is our malfunctioning system of justice anywhere on the government's agenda?

By Anand Ramlogan
2007-04-22

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