THE Opposition yes­ter­day poured cold water on National Security Minister Robert Montague’s announce­ment that he is con­tem­plat­ing the resump­tion of hang­ing in Jamaica, argu­ing that the death penal­ty does not act as a deter­rent to mur­der and is not the solu­tion the country’s nag­ging prob­lem of vio­lent crime.

According to Opposition spokesman on jus­tice and gov­er­nance, Senator Mark Golding, coun­tries in the world that have abol­ished the death penal­ty gen­er­al­ly remain the safest, with the least num­ber of mur­ders. “Those states in the United States which retain and apply the death penal­ty (for exam­ple Texas) are not the states which enjoy the low­est mur­der rates in the US. The active use of the death penal­ty in Jamaica did not pre­vent the car­nage of mur­ders in 1980,” Golding said. Noting that it is not nec­es­sary for the resump­tion of hang­ing at this time, he said that mur­ders have declined by 40 per cent since the extra­di­tion of Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke in 2010, dur­ing an era where the death penal­ty was not a factor.

He said that the Opposition is of the view that the death penal­ty can­not be the solu­tion to Jamaica’s prob­lem of vio­lent crime. “Violent crime in Jamaica has sev­er­al root caus­es, and curb­ing it requires solu­tions that address those caus­es,” he said. Golding sug­gest­ed that Jamaica needs, among oth­er things, growth with equi­ty that cre­ates good-qual­i­ty employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties for our peo­ple, so that they aren’t drawn towards crim­i­nal organ­i­sa­tions and vio­lent crime. He added that the mod­erni­sa­tion and strength­en­ing of the jus­tice sys­tem need to be con­tin­ued, and the imple­men­ta­tion of the Justice Reform Programme should not be allowed to lose momen­tum. “I do not regard min­is­ter Montague’s announce­ment, that the Government is seek­ing “to deter­mine if there are any legal imped­i­ments for the resump­tion of hang­ing in Jamaica”, as a seri­ous pol­i­cy ini­tia­tive that will be imple­ment­ed. The Government can’t hang more peo­ple; nor, as a prac­ti­cal mat­ter, can Parliament. Only the courts can make that hap­pen, and the courts are gov­erned by the rule of law and, in par­tic­u­lar, the human rights guar­an­tees in our Constitution,” Golding said.

In addi­tion, he said that the reac­ti­va­tion of the death penal­ty after 28 years would bring con­dem­na­tion and adverse crit­i­cism on Jamaica from inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment part­ners that are not in sup­port of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Last week, Montague said Government remains com­mit­ted to mobil­is­ing all the resources at its dis­pos­al to wage a “relent­less war” against crim­i­nal ele­ments “intent on destroy­ing our nation”. To this end, he said the Administration is cur­rent­ly explor­ing the pos­si­ble resump­tion of hang­ing. Noting that it forms part of the crime-pre­ven­tion strate­gies aimed at cre­at­ing safer com­mu­ni­ties by tack­ling “law­less ele­ments”, Montague said his state min­is­ter, Pearnel Charles Jr, has been asked to con­sult with sev­er­al stake­hold­ers, includ­ing the Ministry of Justice and Attorney General’s Office, to deter­mine if there are any “legal imped­i­ments” to be addressed. He said the ministry’s over­all approach to cre­at­ing safer com­mu­ni­ties is based on five key pil­lars of crime pre­ven­tion: social devel­op­ment, sit­u­a­tion­al pre­ven­tion, effec­tive polic­ing, swift and sure jus­tice process­es, and reduc­ing re-offending.

MEANWHILE.…
Missing American mis­sion­ary found dead.

ST MARY, Jamaica – OBSERVER ONLINE has learnt that the body of an American mis­sion­ary who was ear­li­er report­ed miss­ing, has been found. 

The search for Harold Nichols con­clud­ed a short while ago when a team of police and res­i­dents found his body in St Mary. His head was report­ed­ly bashed in.
A search was launched for Nichols after his col­league, Randy Hentzel, who is also an American, was found dead on Saturday afternoon.
.….….…..

PORT MARIA, St Mary — Sunday after­noons are tra­di­tion­al­ly spent at home with fam­i­ly mem­bers in Jamaica; how­ev­er, for the res­i­dents of Boscobel in St Mary, Sunday, May 1 was spent search­ing for a man they loved, even as they griev­ed for another.

Their hope was to find Harold Nichols alive; how­ev­er, they were left dis­ap­point­ed and over­come with grief as Nichols’ body was dis­cov­ered after 4:00 pm yes­ter­day. The body of 48-year-old Randy Hentzel had been found a day ear­li­er on Saturday after­noon, after 12:00 pm. However, there were no signs of his col­league, mis­sion­ary Nichols, after the two went on a trail in the Albion Mountain area on Saturday. Reports from the St Mary police are that the two men rent­ed motor­cy­cles in Ocho Rios and went on the trail. Residents stum­bled on Hentzel’s body after 12:00 pm and the police were sum­moned. Deputy Superintendent of Police Dwight Powell said Hentzel’s body was found face down with his hands bound with a piece of cloth believed to be torn from his shirt. One of the motor­cy­cles was seen beside his body. The sec­ond motor­cy­cle was found approx­i­mate­ly three chains away. However, there was no sign of the sec­ond missionary.

While res­i­dents hoped for the best on Sunday, they were left dis­ap­point­ed after the body of the sec­ond mis­sion­ary was found. His head was report­ed­ly bashed in.

The police, along with approx­i­mate­ly 70 res­i­dents, searched for Nichols from approx­i­mate­ly 7:00 am Sunday morn­ing until after 2:00 pm. They lat­er returned to search with the help of canines when the body was found. The two men, who have been vis­it­ing Jamaica for the past 14 years, have done much work in the Boscobel area. “They have Bible study at their homes; every day the chil­dren go there,” Councillor for the Boscobel Division Fitzroy Wilson said. “I have been work­ing with him for the past six to sev­en years,” Wilson said of Nichols. Such was the evi­dence of their work, that res­i­dents turned out in their num­bers to aid in Sunday’s search. “When the chil­dren go to Bible study, he pro­vid­ed refresh­ments for them. He helped some of the kids with mon­ey for school, with their back-to-school,” Wilson said. He said Nichols and his team also built homes in the Boscobel area for indi­gent people.

“We have three hous­es now that we are work­ing on, and just [last] Tuesday we had a meet­ing,” he said. He said at the meet­ing it was revealed that a mis­sion team would vis­it the island next week and work would have con­tin­ued to assist the res­i­dents. “It’s just sad. It is very, very sad,” Wilson said. An elder­ly woman who was among the res­i­dents said she was out with those who searched on Sunday because she, too, has ben­e­fit­ed from the assis­tance of Nichols and his team. “That man build a house and give me,” Goffeth Miller said. Sharon Scott of the Red Cross in Boscobel said Nichols assist­ed the team to build a house for a home­less man last August. “Those two men are two well-loved men in the com­mu­ni­ty,” she said. Scott said res­i­dents wept open­ly on Sunday after the grue­some dis­cov­ery was made in the Albion Mountain area. Community grieves after 2 American mis­sion­ar­ies found dead

KINGSTON, Jamaica – The United States Ambassador to Jamaica Luis Moreno, has extend­ed his “deep­est con­do­lences” to the rel­a­tives and col­leagues of the slain police­woman Judith Williams.

Describing Williams’ mur­der as a sense­less tragedy Moreno said, “every­day many law enforce­ment offi­cers across this island risk their own safe­ty to pro­tect our lives. For this, they deserve respect and grat­i­tude. I com­mend those Officers who con­tin­ue to con­duct their duties pro­fes­sion­al­ly and just­ly with­out fear or favour”.

“On behalf of the United States Mission to Jamaica, I extend our deep and sin­cere con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly and col­leagues of Corporal Judith Williams, who lost her life at the hands of gun­men,” Moreno said in a press release from the Embassy this afternoon.

“This inci­dent and oth­ers like it rein­force that we all must work togeth­er across com­mu­ni­ties and bor­ders to rid this beau­ti­ful coun­try of vio­lence and crim­i­nal­i­ty,” Moreno added.

Williams, 54, who was assigned to the Office of the Commissioner of Police was shot mul­ti­ple times by two men while at a bus stop on her way to work ear­ly Thursday morning.

Police report that the two cul­prits fled the scene on Bray Street, Franklyn Town in east Kingston on a motorcycle.

US Ambassador extends con­do­lences to rel­a­tives, col­leagues of slain policewoman

The rea­sons for crime are many and mul­ti­fac­eted. Likewise, there is no sin­gle or easy solution.

As was said in this space last Friday, the snail-paced nature of Jamaica’s jus­tice sys­tem which, for exam­ple, has so far served to neuter what was sup­posed to be potent anti-gang leg­is­la­tion, has weak­ened crime-fight­ing. Then there is the chron­i­cal­ly under-resourced state of the secu­ri­ty forces: inad­e­quate per­son­nel on the ground, as well as sparse mobil­i­ty and crime-fight­ing tools.

Part of the prob­lem is that, in real terms, the Jamaican soci­ety has rarely focused on crime as a num­ber one pri­or­i­ty. To be fair, Jamaica with its vibrant pol­i­tics, but numer­ous and hefty socio/​economic prob­lems, can’t eas­i­ly focus. With the com­pet­ing demands of unem­ploy­ment, high cost of liv­ing, inad­e­quate health care, edu­ca­tion, shod­dy infra­struc­ture in terms of water, hous­ing, roads, et al, crime — enor­mous prob­lem though it is – some­times gets short shrift in elec­tion campaigns.

I read the story of the oldest known ex-police officer in Jamaica twice his story is riveting and compelling. Despite the challenges of the job he is not bitter or angry 104-year-old Howell Burke, joined the police force on “January 7, 1939” my dearly departed Grandfather was a mere 28 years old at the time.

Mister Burke spoke about his faith. “Longevity wasn’t promised to me, it was a gift from God Himself, because He spared me from four instant deaths dur­ing my life,”.
He spoke dur­ing the inter­view about his feel­ings when Basil Robinson the very first black man was appoint­ed the com­mis­sion­er of police.
“It was the right move,” he said. “We had to have a com­mis­sion­er. As a mat­ter of fact, any­body could have become the com­mis­sion­er, because all we want­ed was a man with dig­ni­ty, a man who was strict to duty, devot­ed to his task and who had inter­est in the work and the inter­est of the men under him.”
One mem­ber of the police par­ty sit­ting in on the inter­view seek­ing to inject polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness chimed in …
“Men and women”.
“We nev­er had women in those days.” Mister Burke corrected.
Whoops , how about know­ing the his­to­ry of the orga­ni­za­tion before open­ing your mouth?

Mister Howell Burke lament­ed that even though he was asked to act in senior posi­tions he was not paid for the times he did. He also said that despite enter­ing the force with cre­den­tials of a teach­ing assis­tant he was not pro­mot­ed com­men­su­rate with those credentials.
He retired from the force at the rank of sergeant.
His com­ments high­light the issues which have plagued the police force arguably since it’s incep­tion and per­sists to this day.
As a for­mer mem­ber who quick­ly left once I real­ized the inner work­ings of the force and the mind­set of the coun­try toward the rule of law I am enthralled by the ser­vice of this vet­er­an and I wish to offer up my best wish­es to him and pray that if it’s God’s will he will have many more healthy years.

THE REAL ISSUE WHICH EMANATED FROM HOWELL BURKE’S INTERVIEW WITH THE OBSERVER

What I real­ly want­ed to relate to from mis­ter Burke’s sto­ry is the rev­e­la­tion that he was a mem­ber of the police par­ty which clashed with Rastafarians in Coral Gardens St James in April 1963.
Said, Mister Burke…
I was the first police­man on the scene and I always say I was the last man to leave, because it was after [Superintendent] Bertie Scott was shot and killed that it end­ed,” Burke said. “It was he who led us into bat­tle. But I can’t give it to you piece­meal like that.” We, the police­men, up to the time when we left the scene when Bertie was killed, no one could tell why such a thing hap­pened, why the attack on the Rastas took place,” 
“You see, we were defend­ing the police, the Government and the peo­ple of Jamaica, because when we went there, at the spot where Bertie was killed, one detec­tive was already hacked to death, Detective Melbourne; and two oth­er police­men were sup­posed to have been killed, but luck­i­ly one sur­vived. I can’t remem­ber the name of the oth­er one, but the one who sur­vived was Campbell, a young police­man. He was left on the way­side to die, because even when we were going up in the riv­er to look for the gang of men who were sup­posed to be in the hills, we passed him lying there with the oth­er man, and we gave him up as dead,”.

According to the Jamaica Observer the offi­cer ref­er­enced was Constable Errol Campbell who, at the time, was ren­dered per­ma­nent­ly dis­abled because of severe injuries to his head and was wheel­chair bound from that time.
Many Jamaicans are not ful­ly con­ver­sant of events which occurred in Coral Gardens in 1963.

The vio­lence in Coral Gardens was trig­gered by a land dis­pute the pre­vi­ous year involv­ing Rudolph Franklin, a Cornwall College grad­u­ate who had embraced the Rastafarian faith. He was report­ed­ly farm­ing ille­gal­ly on land in the Tryall area owned by the Kerr-Jarrett fam­i­ly. During an alter­ca­tion with a police offi­cer, he was alleged­ly shot five times and left for dead in a church­yard. Discovered by school­child­ren, Franklin was tak­en to hos­pi­tal where he was treat­ed but, on his release, was charged with pos­ses­sion of gan­ja. He was sen­tenced to six months in prison and, accord­ing to those who knew him, was an embit­tered per­son when released in ear­ly 1963. Further police harass­ment, they said, pushed him over the edge and sparked the Coral Gardens attack.

Three Rastafarians, three civil­ians and two police­men died at Coral Gardens. Among the dead was Rudolph Franklin, the mil­i­tant leader of the Rasta group that set the Ken Douglas Shell ser­vice sta­tion on fire, before killing the civil­ians, cor­po­ral Clifford Melbourne and Inspector Bertie Scott.
Franklin and two of his accom­plices, Lloyd Waldron and Noël Bowen, were killed at Coral Gardens. Two oth­ers, Carlton Bowen and Clinton Larman, were charged with mur­der and went on tri­al in July 1964. They were found guilty and sen­tenced to hang fol­low­ing a month-long tri­al presided over by Justice Ronald Small. Bowen and Larmond were hanged on December 2, 1964. (source jg).

Agents of the state were mur­dered in that event which was pre­cip­i­tat­ed by the mil­i­tan­cy and ille­gal activ­i­ty of the then-bur­geon­ing Rastafarian move­ment on the Island. Their rhetoric and actions were seen as a threat to nation­al secu­ri­ty and cor­rect­ly so.
The Island’s Prime Minister of the time the Rt Honorable Sir Alexander Bustamante ordered the Military and the police to deci­sive­ly put down the insur­rec­tion which they did.
Officer Howell Burke under­stand that at the time he and his col­leagues were defend­ing the Government and most impor­tant­ly our country.
Officer Howell Burke a cen­te­nar­i­an ful­ly under­stood the con­text in which he and his col­leagues were law­ful­ly and appro­pri­ate­ly ordered to restore order to a chaot­ic sit­u­a­tion in which mur­der and arson had already occurred.
The courts also ful­filled its law­ful oblig­a­tion under the law in the judg­ment it passed and the judg­ment of the courts was appro­pri­ate­ly executed.

Decades lat­er our coun­try has walked away from com­mon-sense law enforce­ment, sup­plant­i­ng the rule of law with ide­o­log­i­cal lib­er­al­ism which has its birth­place at the Mona cam­pus­es of the University of the West Indies.
Those attempts at social engi­neer­ing have result­ed in a cor­rupt and incom­pe­tent crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and a police depart­ment which is a tooth­less paper tiger.
The ensu­ing result is a coun­try in which crim­i­nal gang activ­i­ty is on the rise. The police esti­mate there are over three hun­dred crim­i­nal gangs oper­at­ing on the island of 2.7 mil­lion people.
Each year the Island expe­ri­ences over a thou­sand homi­cides with less than 7% of mur­der­ers con­vict­ed for their crimes.
Of the few who are sen­tenced the appeals courts usu­al­ly revis­it their sen­tences and either reduce the sen­tence of the low­er court or release the offend­er on some archa­ic technicality.

Last December, Public Defender Arlene Harrison Henry sent a report to Parliament, the result of an inves­ti­ga­tion into sev­er­al inci­dents, includ­ing the bloody Coral Gardens clash, for which she rec­om­mend­ed repa­ra­tions and that the Jamaican State apol­o­gizes to Rastafarians.
In any oth­er nation, a pub­lic offi­cial intend­ing to stick her nose into this issue would seek to send a report to the par­lia­ment ask­ing that there be recog­ni­tion of the offi­cers who gave their lives on that day.
Our coun­try has devolved into a mis­guid­ed crim­i­nal par­adise in which self-serv­ing indi­vid­u­al­ists rec­om­mends that Arsonists and cop killers be giv­en remu­ner­a­tions and an apology.

This writer have written several articles regaling the police department and more specifically the Commissioner of Police since news broke that a well known criminal had snuffed out the life of two police officers at poor-man’s corner in the parish of St Thomas just before Christmas of 2015.

Before I go any fur­ther let me pre­empt the inevitable asser­tion that “no life is more impor­tant that anoth­er so the police should go after all killers whether they be cop killers or not” . We have heard that argu­ment too many times ‚I no longer want to respond to it. No one is say­ing police lives are more impor­tant , what we are say­ing is that the police stand between they who would kill us and us .
If the police are all killed there is no buffer, so we have to care about those who risk life and limb for us.

See also: https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​t​h​r​e​e​-​m​o​n​t​h​s​-​l​a​t​e​r​-​n​o​-​w​o​r​d​-​d​u​p​p​y​-​f​i​l​m​-​a​l​l​e​g​e​d​-​c​o​p​-​k​i​l​l​e​r​-​s​t​i​l​l​-​l​o​se/

I doubt seri­ous­ly whether my low­ly yelp­ing had any­thing to do with the police’ push to find this alleged cop-killer Marlon Perry o/​c (dup­py film), but it is a wel­come sight to see that the police are active­ly search­ing for him that’s what matters.
I would imag­ine there is cred­i­ble intel­li­gence which would sup­port the police’s the­o­ry that this alleged mur­der­er is, or was in the parish of Manchester.
As a mat­ter of fact the cap­ture of Kevon Eldermire, oth­er­wise called ‘(Harry Patta) in the parish may be a good indi­ca­tor that even if Perry isn’t/​wasn’t in the parish at least the intel­li­gence had credibility.
Perry’s sup­posed escape from a drag­net is rea­son for the police to reeval­u­ate how they go about these oper­a­tions. For decades our police oper­a­tions have been inside out events which gives sus­pects the abil­i­ty to escape once they elude the ini­tial push.
Many for­mer offi­cers still sub­scribe to this way of doing things, I don’t.
Operations should be an out­side in event, tight­en­ing the cir­cle until the subject/​s is encir­cled with no place to go.
This can­not be some­thing decid­ed at the sta­tion lev­el or at the time the oper­a­tions offi­cer decides to lead sev­er­al dozen or sev­er­al hun­dred offi­cers on an operation.
These tac­tics must be taught at the train­ing acad­e­my and rehearsed at the sta­tion and divi­sion­al lev­els con­tin­u­al­ly so that when the need aris­es every offi­cer fits into the plan like pieces of a jig-saw puz­zle. Every offi­cer must know exact­ly what to do in the event of every giv­en poten­tial scenario.

The soon­er jus­tice is brought to this per­son the bet­ter it is for the police depart­ment, which at this time must first and fore­most look after offi­cer safe­ty before con­sid­er­ing any­one else.
let’s face it, bring­ing Perry in will not mean that the fam­i­lies of the two slain police offi­cers are guar­an­teed jus­tice. The reverse is true, the case will sim­ply drag on while the courts release him back onto the streets to kill again. In the end there will be a ver­dict but not one which works for the fam­i­lies of the dead cops.
The ver­dict will be that the case is thrown out for want of prosecution .
For those inter­est­ed in the truth, that is a tac­tic used to sub­vert the process of jus­tice it is a tri­ad of col­lu­sion which includes the accused crim­i­nal and their inter­est, their defense attorney/​s and the bench.
If the case drags on long enough pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness­es are either killed , have emi­grat­ed, for­got­ten the sequence of events to which they gave depo­si­tions, or have lost inter­est in the case. Case closed .….

Ironically there are high­ly placed peo­ple in Government who are unwit­ting­ly or com­plic­it­ly call­ing for cas­es over 5 years old to be purged from the court dock­ets, exact­ly what crim­i­nals and their bene­fac­tors want. Exactly what is not need­ed , it would be fuel to the fire of cor­rup­tion and incom­pe­tence in the crim­i­nal court system.
Officers may chose to be wary of going the extra mile when it comes to how they approach oth­er mur­ders as it relates to the (inde­com act).
When it comes to the killing of their col­leagues they should throw out any wari­ness and send a clear mes­sage it won’t be tolerated.
The peo­ple can clam­or for what they want, it’s up to them to deter­mine how much of their loved ones inno­cent blood is shed before they real­ize the (inde­com act) is caus­ing the esca­la­tion of crime on the Island.
Until they do offi­cers can run out the clock with­out expos­ing them­selves to undue harm.
The (inde­com act) has embold­ened crim­i­nal­i­ty on the Island , it is an un-belled cat that no rea­son­able per­son or enti­ty there wants to acknowl­edge was a bad idea whose time has come.

In the mean­time an empow­ered crim­i­nal under­world has unleashed it’s new found pow­er on police, killing offi­cers and defy­ing their abil­i­ty to enforce the nations laws.
Police offi­cers must deter­mine whether they will cow­er in fear or go out and exter­mi­nate the ver­mins (inde­com) be damned .

One of the things which total­ly pissed me off dur­ing my 10 year stint in the Jamaica Constabulary Force more than any­thing was the way cer­tain defense lawyers treat­ed the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem as offi­cers of the courts . Some would swoop into the court-room with an air of utter supe­ri­or­i­ty mak­ing the process about their grandios­i­ty than the sanc­ti­ty and fideli­ty of the process.
Not every Lawyer were divas, I had ter­rif­ic work­ing rela­tion­ships with some defense lawyers who were true pro­fes­sion­als. On the oth­er hand many oth­ers were con­sumed with their own sense of supe­ri­or­i­ty and impor­tance and they expect­ed the courts to acqui­esce to their wish­es and demands.
It was because of that air of arro­gance that per­me­at­ed the behav­ior of many of these lawyers why As a young offi­cer who was con­stant­ly before the courts I took no lip from any judge about being late for a case.
One of my famous dust-up was well doc­u­ment­ed with one of the bul­lies of the bench Lenslie Wolf who ulti­mate­ly retired as chief justice .

With foot firm­ly placed on the seat many of the ego-mani­a­cal lawyers would ask for adjourn­ments because they haven’t been paid, under­stand­ably, but they would also bitch and whine when the pros­e­cu­tion’s case is not ready because a wit­ness can­not be locat­ed or the foren­sic report is not ready. Did I men­tion that in those days there was one foren­sic office in Allman Town with One Forensic expert deal­ing with all of the Island’s foren­sics? Oh well I guess I just did. Nah that was not back in the 1950’s that was in the ear­ly 90’s.

I wish I had a dol­lar for every arti­cle I have writ­ten over the last sev­er­al years detail­ing just how the crim­i­nal courts have con­tributed to the crime sit­u­a­tion on the Island. Despite this it is the Police which takes the brunt of the blame for the dam­age done to the sys­tem. Hardly any­one speak to the arro­gance , over acqui­es­cence and the lib­er­al­ism with which the judi­cia­ry approach­es the dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice, save and except for a few no non­sense judges of the past.
The court­room is a place where jus­tice is sup­posed to be dis­pensed equi­tably and fair­ly not just in fact but it must also appear to be done.
Jamaica’s court-rooms are cus­tom­ar­i­ly a place where defense coun­sel and tri­al judges are chum­my , pros­e­cu­tors are tol­er­at­ed, police offi­cers and the bench are dis­tant ene­mies. That has been the gen­er­al rule save and except for a few judges and cer­tain police officers.
In many instances the ani­mus com­ing from the bench toward the police cre­at­ed dis­re­spect on the part of offend­ers before the court.
Jamaica’s crim­i­nals have keen sens­es they under­stand the cracks in they sys­tem and they exploit them fully
Jamaica’s crim­i­nals do not miss much, police offi­cers who tol­er­at­ed judges dis­re­spect got no respect from the streets . Officers who did not allow them­selves to be dis­re­spect­ed were high­ly respect­ed and revered.

Not much has changed for the bet­ter since the ear­ly 90’s in the way cas­es are han­dled in the crim­i­nal courts. In fact there is much evi­dence that the court sys­tem is a a cesspool of incom­pe­tence , crim­i­nal cod­dling and in many cas­es corruption.
In a recent dis­cus­sion I had with a prac­tic­ing defense attor­ney she defend­ed her pro­fes­sion say­ing that in stud­ies done it is found that most adjourn­ments are request­ed by the pros­e­cu­tor and not defense counsel.
Of course I under­stand the police is gross­ly incom­pe­tent and in many cas­es cor­rupt, but I have seen noth­ing which would con­vince me she is cor­rect in her asser­tion. Speaking on the issue of the inor­di­nate delays with­in the sys­tem recent­ly appoint­ed Minister of Justice Marlene Malahoo Forte a for­mer res­i­dent mag­is­trate said she would be meet­ing with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Jamaican Bar Association and the Advocates Association of Jamaica to address the long-stand­ing issue of the slow pace at which jus­tice is deliv­ered in the local court system.(Jg)

“I will be meet­ing with my col­leagues at the bar in short order, begin­ning with the lead­er­ship of the bar asso­ci­a­tion and advo­ca­cy asso­ci­a­tion, and I am con­fi­dent that we can min­imise the delay (of court case res­o­lu­tion), . “Delay in our courts is not just a mat­ter of per­cep­tion, it is a real­i­ty. Many peo­ple are wait­ing for their cas­es to be tried, and for some, their lives hang in the bal­ance while they wait,” said Malahoo Forte, who is also a for­mer mag­is­trate. “Some use var­i­ous delay tac­tics and manip­u­late the sys­tem­at­ic weak­ness­es to their advan­tage and to the frus­tra­tion of oth­ers. “No one par­ty is respon­si­ble for the prob­lem of delay, and no one par­ty can ade­quate­ly address the prob­lem,” argued Malahoo Forte. “Everyone will have to work togeth­er and exer­cise the appro­pri­ate lead­er­ship in their are­na. The min­istries of jus­tice and nation­al secu­ri­ty must col­lab­o­rate, in a new way, with bench and bar, on the leg­isla­tive and admin­is­tra­tive bar­ri­ers to tri­als being held with­in a rea­son­able time.”

Is Delroy Chuck King?

Literally every­one bears some respon­si­bil­i­ty but some are more cul­pa­ble than oth­ers. It was not so long ago that Minister Of Justice Delroy Chuck sug­gest­ed that cas­es in the sys­tem over five years with­out res­o­lu­tion be wiped from the books.
An amnesty for mur­der­ers and rapists…
At the time he made the com­ments I wrote an angry Article in which I won­dered whether Delroy Chuck was crowned King of Jamaica and there­fore had the pow­er to decree amnesty to mass mur­der­ers, rapists and oth­er dan­ger­ous crim­i­nal sim­ply because the incom­pe­tent cor­rupt court sys­tem can­not do it’s job.
This is how things gets done in Jamaica though, one per­son say some­thing and it become the way things are done. No one includ­ing Chuck both­ered to think that defense lawyers have gamed the sys­tem for years result­ing in the back­log in the sys­tem and the ulti­mate frus­tra­tion of pros­e­cu­tion witnesses.
Maybe Chuck Malahoo Forte and oth­ers before them real­ly want it this way . How can they even begin to talk about social jus­tice , human rights, civ­il rights when they allow mur­der­ers to roam the streets and kill at will?

It is that Lunacy why the so-called inves­tiga­tive agency (inde­com) sup­pos­ed­ly inves­ti­gates every police shoot­ing whether there are alle­ga­tions of impro­pri­ety or not. Too many chiefs not enough indians.
It is that brain-dead stu­pid­i­ty which caused Fred Hickling an old shrink to opine that the police could have avoid­ed killing a man alleged­ly of unsound mind who grabbed an offi­cer’s auto­mat­ic rifle and refused com­mand to drop the weapon. Hickling who has offered Psychiatric opin­ions for years stat­ed that though the man was point­ing the weapon at police they could have con­tact­ed the Hospital and avoid­ed killing him.
Clearly this jack­ass has spent too much time in the loonie bin he has him­self become a total nutcase.
Notwithstanding that idi­ot­ic com­ment there are more than enough fools who believe that that his stu­pid com­ment was a viable option for offi­cers who were star­ing down the bar­rel of that AR15.

The very notion that any­one could con­sid­er say­ing to alleged mur­der­ers you are free to go because the courts can­not get it’s act togeth­er is proof pos­i­tive these peo­ple does not care about the vic­tims of crime.
It is exact­ly sug­ges­tions like that which gives judges and defense attor­neys licence to abro­gate the process in favor of dan­ger­ous criminals.
It’s exact­ly why no politi­cian on the Island except JAG Smith has ever been impris­oned . It is exact­ly the shit with­ing the shit-stem why a politi­cian could walk free with­out even answer­ing to the charges he was arrest­ed for in a clear-cut case of pet­ty thiev­ery. In none of the dis­cus­sions about deal­ing with the present state of the courts sys­tem is the inter­est of crime vic­tims a pri­or­i­ty. What they are focused on is the amount of time it takes to get res­o­lu­tion of cas­es, a sit­u­a­tion they created.
Ironically as they lament the fact that accused crim­i­nals are forced to wait for case res­o­lu­tions they com­plete­ly ignore the trau­ma crime vic­tims feel when those who mur­der and rape their loved ones are ulti­mate­ly returned to the streets with­out pay­ing for their crimes.

Jamaica con­tin­ue to see record num­ber of mur­ders, politi­cians and police tell the pub­lic , “oh it’s most­ly peo­ple who are engaged in the lot­to scam game who are being killed” . Sure, sure , they aren’t people.
The shock­ing real­i­ty is that the mech­a­nisms in place are breed­ing crime not cur­tail­ing it.
Poor rela­tion­ship between pros­e­cu­tor’s office and police.
Chummy rela­tions between bench and bar blurs the lines, as such it’s some­times dif­fi­cult to tell whether judges are tru­ly judges or defense attorneys.
The Police as the ene­my , is not a new phe­nom­e­non, many on the bench has over sev­er­al decades used that perch to dam­age the police’s authority.

The Jamaican peo­ple are law­less , the politi­cians and opin­ion makes basi­cal­ly have shit for brains. The mur­der mad­ness can stop in a mat­ter of months.
Simply put the opin­ion­at­ed ass­holes who have some­thing to say about every damn thing need to shut the f**k up and get out the way.
The stu­pid politi­cians need to rec­og­nize that pret­ty soon they will not be able to do any­thing about the gangs oper­at­ing there.
Let the lessons of 2010 sink in for a moment , it was the secu­ri­ty forces which hand­ed Jamaica back to the shit for brain politi­cians after mer­ce­nar­ies made their pow­er known. Stop the damn talk­ing and put tough laws in place to stop this down­ward spiral.

In what is being lauded as the largest maritime drug bust in Jamaica in more than 14 years, the Jamaica Constabulary Force’s Narcotics Police and the Jamaica Defense Force allegedly intercepted a cocaine laden boat on a beach in Savanna-la-mar Westmoreland , estimated street value US$7.2 million (approximately J$1 billion).

According to Jamaican Media the The JDF report­ed that at approx­i­mate­ly 1 a.m. on Monday a United States Maritime Patrol Aircraft spot­ted a ves­sel sus­pect­ed of illic­it traf­fick­ing head­ing towards Jamaica and informed the JDF head­quar­ters. The infor­ma­tion was passed to the JDF Coast Guard, which deployed patrol ves­sels to inter­cept and appre­hend the go-fast boat. When spot­ted, the oper­a­tors of the go-fast report­ed­ly made efforts to evade cap­ture and to jet­ti­son its car­go. The JDF, along with its Jamaica Constabulary Force Narcotics Division coun­ter­parts, then launched a rapid-response deploy­ment involv­ing ele­ments of the JDF Air Wing for aer­i­al sup­port and infantry sol­diers from the First Battalion the Jamaica Regiment, who were already deployed in Westmoreland on inter­nal secu­ri­ty duties. During the pur­suit, the JDF Coast Guard fired warn­ing shots across the bow of the ves­sel in what the army described as “keep­ing with inter­na­tion­al mar­itime law enforce­ment rules of engagement”.The ves­sel was even­tu­al­ly appre­hend­ed and four men, believed to be part of the sus­pect­ed crew, were detained by the Narcotics Police who are han­dling the inves­ti­ga­tion. According to the same media report , head of the Narcotics police Senior Superintendent Calvin Small, said the men would be inter­viewed and a deci­sion made if they should be charged.

Where Are The Investigators…

To those opposed to the pro­lif­er­a­tion of drugs and it’s effects in our pop­u­la­tion the inter­cep­tion of this ship­ment is a wel­come relief. Yet the fact that no one has been appre­hend­ed with a view to get­ting to it’s Genesis is yet anoth­er fail­ing of the secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus fol­low­ing in the pat­tern of weapons and drug finds at the wharves which results in no arrests.
The Police being aware that the way this event was pre­sent­ed to the pub­lic cre­at­ed more ques­tions than answers issued a state­ment which sought to clar­i­fy exact­ly what occurred.
According to the police’s own account­ing : A joint police/​military oper­a­tion in Belmont District, Westmoreland inter­cept­ed a ves­sel car­ry­ing 36 bales of cocaine val­ued just under $1 bil­lion (US$7.5). “Four men, who were observed aban­don­ing the ves­sel and run­ning off in dif­fer­ent direc­tions were pur­sued and tak­en into cus­tody,” a CCU spokesman had said in the release on Saturday.
However, in a lat­er release the CCU indi­cat­ed that its ini­tial report was not accu­rate. Quoting from the actu­al inci­dent report, the CCU instead said the following:
“Approximately 1:00 a.m. a joint police and mil­i­tary team, which includ­ed the Jamaica Defense Force Air Wing and Coast Guard teams inter­cept­ed a blue 28-foot ves­sel, which was spot­ted com­ing ashore at Belmont. ‘On the approach of secu­ri­ty per­son­nel to the ves­sel, men aboard the ves­sel aban­doned it and ran in dif­fer­ent direc­tions. Four men were sub­se­quent­ly held’.” The CCU also said that the four men were “duly processed” and inter­viewed in the pres­ence of their lawyer and lat­er released as inves­ti­ga­tors were rea­son­ably sat­is­fied that the evi­dence avail­able did not link the men to the seizure. The CCU says it regrets the error and any incon­ve­nience that may have been caused.

The CCU’s clar­i­fi­ca­tion in my esti­ma­tion cre­at­ed more ques­tions than answers.
If the Police’s ver­sion of events are to be believed, that they observed four men run­ning from the boats and they appre­hend­ed them, under what plau­si­ble sce­nario in law would the police be able to say they were rea­son­ably sat­is­fied that the evi­dence avail­able did not link the men to the seizure?
Did the Police in fact see the men run­ning from the boat?
Did the Police appre­hend the same men they alleged­ly saw run­ning from the boat?
Neither the ini­tial report­ing nor the fol­low-up report­ing said the police made a mis­take about the men they alleged­ly saw run­ning from the boat. Even if there were an instance of error involv­ing the iden­ti­ty of one of the men, what are the chances the police would have nabbed four men who had noth­ing to do with the cocaine haul?

How could the men arrest­ed by the police lawyer up so quick­ly, be inter­viewed and released so expe­di­tious­ly in a case of this magnitude?
Despite what appears to be some back-slap­ping by local police and even their American coun­ter­parts from media report­ing there appears to be a lot more to this cocaine bust than meets the eyes.
Whose drug ship­ment was it?
Why were the four men inter­viewed and released? Who pro­vid­ed them lawyers?
If the men were in fact on the boat there is no legal sce­nario in which they may be deemed inno­cent by the police unless they were there against their will, in which case a pro­tract­ed inves­ti­ga­tion would have to occur to deter­mine the verac­i­ty of their claim, as well as to deter­mine who was respon­si­ble. This would have made releas­ing them impos­si­ble or at best imprac­ti­cal in such short a time.
If they were not on the boat then the police is say­ing by default they unequiv­o­cal­ly lied about a major find which could have poten­tial­ly put seri­ous play­ers in jail for a long time.
The coun­try deserve to know the truth to this sto­ry which is shap­ing up to be a con­vo­lut­ed web of lies and deception.

The fact that the police is inca­pable of explain­ing how such a major drug find could result in no arrest and pos­si­ble pros­e­cu­tion leaves the pub­lic to spec­u­late as to what exact­ly occurred. If there was any covert involve­ment in the ship­ment, whether it involves Jamaica , the United States or any oth­er coun­try the Jamaican peo­ple must be made aware.
Nothing that the police has said thus far makes sense, it’s weak attempt at an expla­na­tion has once again cast the agency as an incom­pe­tent agency which can’t even explain it’s own lies.

Thepolice say they have arrest­ed and charged more than 250 peo­ple under the anti-gang law since last year, but their hard work has been frus­trat­ed as none of the cas­es have been brought to tri­al due to the heavy back­log in the courts.

“Since we’ve had the anti-gang leg­is­la­tion, we have arrest­ed over 253 per­sons. The chal­lenge we face is that [of the] 208 per­sons last year and 46 this year, none of those cas­es have gone through the courts yet. They’re all clogged up some­where in the court sys­tem,” lament­ed Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge of crime Glenmore Hinds. Hinds made the rev­e­la­tion at yesterday’s sit­ting of the Jamaica Observer Press Club which host­ed the constabulary’s top brass at the newspaper’s Beechwood Avenue head­quar­ters in Kingston. Hinds also stat­ed that he was of the view that “there is no real urgency” to pri­ori­tise these cas­es. “One of the things that we want to see done is at least for some of these cas­es to go through to set the prece­dence, and recog­nise where there are short­com­ings in the law. But until that hap­pens, we won’t see how effec­tive the law is. It’s the vol­ume; the sys­tem can­not cope,” he insisted.

The Criminal Justice (Suppression of Criminal Organisations) Bill, pop­u­lar­ly called the anti-gang law, came into effect in 2014 and forms part of the Government’s strat­e­gy to fight crime. It makes pro­vi­sion for the dis­rup­tion and sup­pres­sion of crim­i­nal organ­i­sa­tions and out­lines offences, in order to restore a sense of secu­ri­ty in the coun­try and strength­en the capac­i­ty of law enforce­ment agen­cies to effec­tive­ly deal with crime. The law also seeks to pro­hib­it peo­ple from estab­lish­ing a crim­i­nal organ­i­sa­tion; tak­ing part in, or par­tic­i­pat­ing in a crim­i­nal organ­i­sa­tion; pro­vid­ing or obtain­ing a ben­e­fit from a crim­i­nal organ­i­sa­tion; and har­bour­ing or con­ceal­ing a par­tic­i­pant in a crim­i­nal organisation.

Yesterday, Deputy Commissioner Hinds said that some 300 gangs, at max­i­mum, oper­ate island­wide, with the major­i­ty in the Jamaica Constabulary Force’s St Andrew South Division. Following close­ly, Hinds said, are the St Catherine North Division, which hous­es the country’s two main gangs – Klansman and One Order; Kingston Western Division; Kingston Eastern Division; and sec­tions of St James. Read more here :Frustrated!

The police infor­ma­tion arm, the Corporate Communications Unit (CCU), is seek­ing to explain why four men it ini­tial­ly claimed were “observed” aban­don­ing a drug-car­ry­ing ves­sel have been released from police custody.

On Saturday, the CCU said the men were detained dur­ing a joint police/​military oper­a­tion in Belmont District, Westmoreland after law enforcers inter­cept­ed the ves­sel car­ry­ing 36 bales of cocaine val­ued just under $1 bil­lion (US$7.5). “Four men, who were observed aban­don­ing the ves­sel and run­ning off in dif­fer­ent direc­tions were pur­sued and tak­en into cus­tody,” a CCU spokesman had said in the release on Saturday. However, in a release this after­noon, the CCU indi­cat­ed that its ini­tial report was not accu­rate. Quoting from the actu­al inci­dent report, the CCU instead said the fol­low­ing: “Approximately 1:00 a.m. a joint police and mil­i­tary team, which includ­ed the JamaicaDefence Force Air Wing and Coast Guard teams inter­cept­ed a blue 28-foot ves­sel, which was spot­ted com­ing ashore at Belmont. ‘On the approach of secu­ri­ty per­son­nel to the ves­sel, men aboard the ves­sel aban­doned it and ran in dif­fer­ent direc­tions. Four men were sub­se­quent­ly held’.”

The CCU also said today that the four men were “duly processed” and inter­viewed in the pres­ence of their lawyer and lat­er released as inves­ti­ga­tors were rea­son­ably sat­is­fied that the evi­dence avail­able did not link the men to the seizure. The CCU says it regrets the error and any incon­ve­nience that may have been caused. Police Explain Why Men Held After $1b Drug Bust Released

In a recent conversation my wife and I debated whether humans are killing each other at more alarming rates today as compared to centuries ago?
Or whether information which flows ²⁴⁄₇ into our spaces creates the impression the sky is falling?
Needless to say at the end of the discussion we were no nearer an answer than when we first started the conversation.
The fact is that regardless of the truth behind this issue, what is not in question is that humans have always had a desire to kill each other.
Whether it was barbaric medieval slaughter which saw battlefields littered with the corpses of thousands of gored and impaled once breathing human beings, or the dropping of Atom bombs which obliterated entire cities vaporizing hundreds of thousands in an instant and many more as time passed, our specie has constantly sought out new ways to inflict maximum pain and death on each other.

So what is it which makes humans so cal­lous , so bru­tal, so indif­fer­ent to the life oth­er humans? I do not pre­tend to have the answer.
What I do know is that through­out his­to­ry humans have built mas­sive for­ti­fi­ca­tions to keep them­selves safe.
Despite the fact that America dropped two Atom bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki sup­pos­ed­ly to end the car­nage of world-war two, it may be argued that oth­er nations arm­ing them­selves with nuclear weapons , may have some­thing to do with the fact that no oth­er coun­try has used a weapon of that mag­ni­tude since 1945.

Our innate desire to kill is cat­a­loged in the Biblical book of Genesis, Cain in a fit of jeal­ousy alleged­ly mur­dered his only broth­er Abel.
David a revered sym­bol of the Old Testament killed Goliath and count­less oth­ers. He even had his trust­ed sol­dier Uriah sent to the front of the bat­tle so he could be killed because he had impreg­nat­ed his wife.
Yet David is said to be a man of God’s own heart.
Does this means that the God of the Bible sanc­tion killings?
After all, the old tes­ta­ment is replete with sto­ries detail­ing God’s inter­ven­tion in sup­port of those in whom he found favor. He is said to have deliverd their ene­mies into their hands.
In instance after instance the ene­mies of the friends of God usu­al­ly end up on the busi­ness end of the sword.
According to the New Testament book of John chap­ter 18 – 10 ‚Simon Peter then, hav­ing a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s slave, and cut off his right ear’ the slave’s name was Malchus. They had come to take Jesus to take him away to be crucified.
Would Peter have cut off the ear of a mighty Roman sol­dier or did Peter cut the ear from the ser­vant of the high Priest sim­ply because he could?

My point is that some­times vic­tims are vic­tims because they are seen as week , inca­pable of defend­ing them­selves. A per­son car­ry­ing a gun is like­ly to feel pow­er­ful if he is the only per­son armed with a gun.
Even the odds a bit by arm­ing all cit­i­zens with­out crim­i­nal records, and put in place seri­ous penal­ties for improp­er use of guns. That ought to reduce the sense of pow­er crim­i­nals have over the unarmed population.
There is evi­dence that in cas­es where this is done ‚gun crimes are dras­ti­cal­ly reduced.

In 1982 the Town of Kennesaw Georgia saw crime drop 89% after Legislators passed a law which man­dat­ed that all homes have at least one firearm with ammunition.
Framers of the law said though crime was not the rea­son for the law the drop in crime can­not be ignored as a byprod­uct of the law. Since then crime in Kennesaw has remained and has­n’t gone back to for­mer num­bers even though crime has spiked in neigh­bor­ing coun­ties of Decatur and others.

The nation of Switzerland has a some­what sim­i­lar his­to­ry as the United States hav­ing won its inde­pen­dence in a rev­o­lu­tion­ary war fought by an armed cit­i­zen­ry. In 1291, sev­er­al can­tons (states) began a war of nation­al lib­er­a­tion against Austria’s Hapsburg Empire.
In Switzerland almost every adult male is legal­ly required to pos­sess a gun. One of the few nations with a high­er per capi­ta rate of gun own­er­ship than the United States, Switzerland has vir­tu­al­ly no gun crime.
Additionally dur­ing World War II, Hitler want­ed the Swiss gold reserves and need­ed free com­mu­ni­ca­tions and tran­sit through Switzerland to sup­ply Axis forces in the Mediterranean. But when mil­i­tary plan­ners looked at Switzerland’s well-armed cit­i­zen­ry, moun­tain­ous ter­rain, and civ­il defense for­ti­fi­ca­tions, Switzerland lost its appeal as an inva­sion tar­get. While two World Wars raged, Switzerland enjoyed a secure peace.

Jamaica like many of the world’s oth­er nations have seen incred­i­ble amounts of it’s cit­i­zens cut down by thugs with guns while the inno­cent are forced to jump through hoops to secure a reg­is­tered firearm. The fact is that those who use guns to inflict death on oth­ers hard­ly uses reg­is­tered weapons to do so.
In the United States where School shoot­ings occur with alarm­ing fre­quen­cy the data shows they occur in areas where all guns are banned.
I am not sug­gest­ing that every per­son be allowed to car­ry a gun but it cer­tain­ly evens the odds if inno­cent law abid­ing cit­i­zens have the same rights maraud­ing crim­i­nals do.
Citizens who own firearms and are well trained in the safe and effi­cient use of them are a seri­ous deter­rent to those who would prey on the innocent.

As more and more cit­i­zens become prey to crim­i­nals it may be time that a more seri­ous pol­i­cy deci­sion be tak­en to arm the citizenry.
This can eas­i­ly be done through leg­is­la­tion which puts in place seri­ous back­ground checks. This would include psy­cho­log­i­cal eval­u­a­tion and manda­to­ry con­tin­u­ous train­ing while increas­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly the penal­ties for gun crimes.
This by itself is not a sil­ver bul­let which will dri­ve down crime, but it is one more thing which will seri­ous­ly pos­i­tive­ly impact this out of con­trol crime sit­u­a­tion in Jamaica which nei­ther the Government nor the police know how to handle.

Oh by the way From age 21 to 32, a Swiss man serves as a “front­line” troop in the Auszug, and devotes three weeks a year (in eight of the 12 years) to con­tin­ued train­ing. From age 33 to 42, he serves in the Landwehr (like America’s National Guard); every few years, he reports for two-week train­ing peri­ods. Finally, from ages 43, to 50, he serves in the Landsturm; in this peri­od, he only spends 13 days total in “home guard courses.”
Jamaica too should imple­ment a pol­i­cy of manda­to­ry mil­i­tary ser­vice which does not nec­es­sar­i­ly include weapons training.
Recruits would be trained in life’s skills which will aid their devel­op­ment after they leave the service.

Government could aid with Job place­ment and loans for them to start their own busi­ness­es after they com­plete their service.
If a high school grad­u­ate is head­ing to col­lege that indi­vid­ual should be exempt from mil­i­tary service.
In most devel­oped nations mil­i­tary ser­vice pro­vides worth­while skills , Jamaica can emu­late these ideas to it’s benefit.
Additionally the dis­ci­pline derived from mil­i­tary ser­vice is sure to have a pos­i­tive impact on the young peo­ple who ben­e­fit from it.
This ought to trans­late into more round­ed pro­duc­tive citizens.

Arming law abid­ing cit­i­zens and exer­cis­ing social con­trol of the young is prob­a­bly all a coun­try like Jamaica is left with if it is ever to con­trol the rag­ing crime monster.
The chal­lenge is how to do so over the howls of con­dem­na­tion which is sure to emanate from the legions of peo­ple who con­demn every attempt to deal effec­tive­ly with crime.

Lee Carroll Brooker, a 76-year-old disabled army veteran, says he was growing the marijuana in his Alabama back yard to alleviate his own health problems.

The US supreme court is poised on Friday to decide whether to take on the case of a 76-year-old dis­abled army vet­er­an hand­ed a sen­tence of life in prison with­out parole for grow­ing mar­i­jua­na in his back yard to alle­vi­ate his own health prob­lems. If the court does not review the case, Lee Carroll Brooker is des­tined to die behind bars even though judges in his native Alabama have declared this was not an appro­pri­ate pun­ish­ment. Brooker is argu­ing that such a hefty sanc­tion for mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion vio­lates the eighth amend­ment to the US con­sti­tu­tion because it amounts to cru­el and unusu­al punishment.

He has been sub­ject­ed to strict sen­tenc­ing manda­to­ry min­i­mum laws in Alabama because the cannabis offense involves a cer­tain weight of the drug and comes on top of con­vic­tions for armed rob­bery more than 30 years ago in Florida when Brooker held up a series of liquor stores, his tri­al lawyer John Steensland said on Wednesday. Brooker was arrest­ed in 2011 when police vis­it­ed his address in Cottonwood, south­ern Alabama, on an unre­lat­ed mat­ter and found that he was grow­ing mar­i­jua­na behind the house. The police seized 34 plants. They were sent for foren­sic analy­sis and weighed in their entire­ty, includ­ing the stalks, which are not used in cannabis con­sump­tion. The plants weighed a total of 2.85lb, which placed the haul above the thresh­old of pos­sess­ing 2.2lb of the drug that, in con­junc­tion with cer­tain pri­or felony con­vic­tions, trig­gers the use of life with­out parole as the manda­to­ry sen­tence under Alabama law.

“The actu­al usable amount of mar­i­jua­na from the con­tra­band was a frac­tion of the 2.85 lbs and clear­ly under the thresh­old of 2.2 lbs,” accord­ing to court doc­u­ments filed in Brooker’s case. “The evi­dence clear­ly indi­cat­ed that Brooker was sim­ply grow­ing said mar­i­jua­na plans for his own per­son­al use in an effort to self-med­icate,” the doc­u­ment added. But in announc­ing the state supreme court’s deci­sion, Alabama’s chief jus­tice, Roy Moore, issued a lengthy expla­na­tion point­ing out that the orig­i­nal tri­al judge, Larry Anderson, had said: “If the court could sen­tence you to a term that is less than life with­out parole, I would. However, the law is very spe­cif­ic … there is no discretion.”

And Moore him­self added that Brooker’s sen­tence was “exces­sive and unjus­ti­fied” and urged the Alabama leg­is­la­ture to “revis­it the statu­to­ry sen­tenc­ing scheme” for the state. Brooker’s attor­ney Steensland said: “The judges’ hands were tied.” Now his for­mer client is tak­ing his case to the US supreme court, and is being rep­re­sent­ed by Bryan Stevenson, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Montgomery-based advo­ca­cy group Equal Justice Initiative. Marijuana for med­ical use is now legal in 23 states and the District of Columbia. In addi­tion, the Pennsylvania leg­is­la­ture on Wednesday sent a bill legal­iz­ing med­ical mar­i­jua­na to the state gov­er­nor to sign. Last September, Roy Moore, the chief jus­tice of Alabama, said sen­tenc­ing laws need­ed to be changed in the state in light of Brooker’s plight, after the state’s supreme court reluc­tant­ly refused to over­turn an appeal to the man’s sen­tence. Moore said there were “grave flaws” in Alabama’s sen­tenc­ing sys­tem when a per­son could be sen­tenced to life with­out parole for a non-vio­lent drug offense.

Steensland sub­mit­ted mate­r­i­al dur­ing his client’s tri­al and sen­tenc­ing pro­ceed­ings that showed he was in the US army for nine years after join­ing up at the age of 17 and was fre­quent­ly post­ed abroad, com­ing under ene­my fire on tours in Lebanon and the Dominican Republic. He rose to the rank of sergeant in the 82^nd air­borne divi­sion and was award­ed the com­bat infantry­man badge for par­tic­i­pat­ing in active ground com­bat, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments. “It’s a bru­tal case, egre­gious. He was using mar­i­jua­na for his own use for lin­ger­ing trou­bles with his per­son­al health, some relat­ed to his mil­i­tary ser­vice. We had hoped for a more rea­son­able set­tle­ment, but the judges at tri­al and appeal had their hands tied,” Steensland said. The attor­ney said there was no evi­dence and had been no claims that Brooker had ever tried to sell the drug. He said his crimes in Florida as a much younger man were linked to a time in his life when he drank heav­i­ly instead of seek­ing med­ical treat­ment for phys­i­cal and men­tal ailments.

“It doesn’t excuse any of this but it puts it in some per­spec­tive. He robbed some liquor stores and no one was hurt. It’s seri­ous but he served time for that. When I rep­re­sent­ed him I found him to be a nice man,” he said. Families Against Mandatory Minimums (Famm), a Washington DC-based lob­by­ing and advo­ca­cy group, has filed a friend of the court brief with Scotus on Brooker’s behalf.“It is hard to under­stand how, in a civ­i­lized soci­ety, the law can tol­er­ate that a 76-year-old dec­o­rat­ed, dis­abled com­bat vet­er­an is sen­tenced to die in prison for grow­ing mar­i­jua­na in his back­yard for per­son­al use,” the brief states. Famm’s brief adds that the way manda­to­ry min­i­mum laws shift dis­cre­tion in sen­tenc­ing away from the “inde­pen­dent judi­cia­ry … can lead to arbi­trary, capri­cious and unfair sentences”.

Mary Price, Famm gen­er­al coun­sel, said that if Scotus decid­ed to take Brooker’s case, and ulti­mate­ly ruled in his favour, it would send a mes­sage “far and wide” that manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tences “can be so arbi­trary and so inhu­mane that they offend the US con­sti­tu­tion”. http://​www​.the​guardian​.com/​s​o​c​i​e​t​y​/​2​0​1​6​/​a​p​r​/​1​5​/​l​e​e​-​c​a​r​r​o​l​l​-​b​r​o​o​k​e​r​-​a​l​a​b​a​m​a​-​m​a​r​i​j​u​a​n​a​-​s​e​n​t​e​nce