Courts Of Injustice

A St Ann woman who fab­ri­cat­ed a sto­ry that she was raped in January 2021 was had her case con­clud­ed in the rather crim­i­nal-friend­ly man­ner one would expect in Jamaica.
To begin with, she dis­ap­peared, caus­ing those who knew her to be alarmed, and when she turned up, she con­coct­ed a mouth­ful of lies that she was raped; I sus­pect that the full intent of her lies was to cre­ate the impres­sion that she was abduct­ed then raped.
Thankfully the police did due dili­gence, and her sto­ry was found to be made up, and she was arrest­ed and charged for pub­lic mischief.
Now imag­ine for a minute that some man was sus­pect­ed of rap­ing her, imag­ine that man was seen, he could have been chopped to death, shot, and killed, if the police appre­hend­ed some­one, that per­son could have spent years in jail await­ing tri­al and even­tu­al­ly con­vict­ed on a lie.
I laid out that sce­nario just so that there is a fuller under­stand­ing of the seri­ous­ness of her false alle­ga­tions. The men­tal, phys­i­cal and finan­cial trau­ma she could have caused some inno­cent man is incalculable.

Now for the sen­tenc­ing, the woman plead guilty to the charges, and by the way, we do not know her name. Now I could see if a woman was legit­i­mate­ly raped and the jus­tice sys­tem chose to keep her iden­ti­ty pri­vate; I am in total agree­ment with that.
But why is the iden­ti­ty of a con­vict­ed crim­i­nal being kept a secret?
It requires police resources to inves­ti­gate these alle­ga­tions when they are report­ed, and it requires court resources to adju­di­cate the case to a conclusion.
The peo­ple have an inter­est in just out­comes; after all, it is the peo­ple’s mon­ey that pays the police, court staff, and, unfor­tu­nate­ly, the judges.
But those con­sid­er­a­tions were sec­ondary to senior parish judge Michele Salmon, who decid­ed against prison time for the con­fessed crim­i­nal, decid­ed against a mon­e­tary fine, decid­ed against com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice as a means to repay the people.
She opt­ed instead for a sen­tence of two years pro­ba­tion and counseling.
Well, there you have it, folks; it pays to com­mit crimes in Jamaica. You can rest assured that regard­less of the crimes you com­mit, a judge will allow you to walk out of court after plead­ing guilty or being con­vict­ed scott- free.
Please do not try to con­vince me that pro­ba­tion is a just penal­ty for this crime.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.