Liberal Supreme Court Overturns Law That Keeps Criminals In Jail.

A Full Court, com­pris­ing Justice Horace Marsh, Justice Patrick Brooks and Justice Leighton Pusey held on Friday that the amend­ments to the Bail Act were uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and made sev­er­al dec­la­ra­tions. Amendments were made to the Bail Act as the Government strug­gled to deal with the high crime rate and was expect­ed to be in place for one year. The 60-day peri­od in cus­tody was sub­ject to the right of the per­son being held to be brought before the court after sev­en days, and there­after at 14-day inter­vals, at which time the court reviews the ques­tion of whether the per­son should con­tin­ue to be held in cus­tody or bail be con­sid­ered. The pros­e­cu­tion also had the right to appeal against the grant­i­ng of bail.

FORMER JUSTICE Minister Senator A.J. Nicholson, QC, has wel­comed the court’s rul­ing that last year’s amend­ments to the Bail Act were uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. The Supreme Court struck down the amend­ments last Friday. He explained that, as leader of Opposition busi­ness, when the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion came to be debat­ed in the Senate he advised that the People’s National Party (PNP) would not lend sup­port to the amend­ments because the Government min­is­ters who pilot­ed the Bill failed to con­vince them that the amend-ments were not in breach of cer­tain sec­tions of the Chapter on Fundamental Rights in the Constitution.(cour­tesy the jamaica glean­er) It was report­ed then that short­ly before six anti-crime bills were passed on July 9 last year, for­mer res­i­dent mag­is­trate Senator Marlene Malahoo Forte had acknowl­edged that the Interim Bail Act to pro­vide for a 60-day deten­tion of per­sons who com­mit seri­ous gun and drug-relat­ed offences was draconian.

One thing is appar­ent , and that is that both sides of the polit­i­cal divide, play polit­i­cal games with crime when they are in oppo­si­tion, recent state­ments from Delroy Chuch (now Justice Minister) and Peter Bunting from the PNP made them unqual­i­fied to hold any office that has to do with crime and nation­al security.These hacks should nev­er be privy to any­thing that has to do with security.

Unfortunately these are the civil­lian boss­es of the Police force and Military, it’s a damn dis­grace that these morons who dis­parge police and the rule of law from their perch­es on the oppo­si­tion bench­es , when elect­ed pre­tend that they are bas­tions of sup­port for the rule of law. These guys should not even be allowed in to clean the floors of the peo­ple’s house of Parliament.

The Ruling of the Supreme Court in this mat­ter shows a cou­ple of things, .(1) That the Architects of this piece of leg­is­la­tion did not take enough legal coun­sel to ensure that it would pass the Constitutional smell test.(2) That Jamaica’s Judges sim­ply does not get it. Now let me has­ten to say I am not a Lawyer, and I must also add that if the piece of Legislation is Unconstitutional then the learned Judges has a duty to strike it down. Clearly from their actions they believe that it was Unconstitutional as con­sti­tut­ed. This brings us to the meat of the matter:Who were the part­ners with the Government in draft­ing this piece of Legislation? it clear­ly could not be the Opposition Party in Jamaica, clear­ly every­one knows that they will take no action against crim­i­nal­i­ty or Terror , .This left the Government with no grown ups , with whom to debate, a com­po­nent impor­tant in get­ting the best results possible.

The Jamaican pub­lic, clear­ly an opin­ion­at­ed but nonethe­less large­ly uninformed,uneducated pub­lic must under­stand that this forms part of the rea­son the leg­is­la­tion was ruled Unconstitutional. On the oth­er hand it is Interesting to take note as we crow about the fact that our Democracy works, that we must ask our­selves ” work for whom” Does this Ruling work for the almost two Thousand peo­ple whom are slaugh­tered each year?. Does it work for the Hundreds of chil­dren mur­dered.? Does it work for the hun­dreds of women Raped each year? Does it work for the peo­ple liv­ing in the Garrisons whose daugh­ters are being abused by Local thugs ‚who are unable to speak out because of fear of their lives and their prop­er­ty.? Does it work for the peo­ple who are chased out of their homes, their homes razed with fire , or tak­en over by thugs.? Does it work for the Police Officers and sol­diers who toil to remove the ter­ror­ists from the streets only to see them released back onto the streets as soon as they are tak­en in.? Does it work for the silent Jamaicans who are too scared or too pow­er­less to open­ly declare that yes they do sup­port the mea­sures of the Government ‚at least in rec­og­niz­ing that there needs to be tough new, appro­pri­ate Legislation enact­ed that have com­men­su­rate penal­ty for the crimes being com­mit­ted. When we remove all of the afore­men­tioned from the equa­tion , just who should be proud of the Supreme Court’s Ruling? Is it the Elitists that reside in the Mansions above Cross Roads,or the Criminals that lit­er­al­ly run the streets ?.

Either way this is real­ly no great vic­to­ry for dea­cent Jamaican people.!!!!