Defeated Justice

As peo­ple we look to the courts to dis­pense Justice, we gra­tu­itous­ly defer to the Courts to do whats right as the final arbiter of truth and fairness.

Jamaicans are no dif­fer­ent, we too look to the courts to do the right thing. Unfortunately for Jamaicans in giv­ing that def­er­ence we miss the glar­ing fact that the courts are not too far removed from the cor­ro­sive influ­ence of the crim­i­nal cabal of crime car­tels which run the Island.
Are the judges out there shoot­ing people ?
Of course not !!!
But they may as well have been because there are clear and unequiv­o­cal evi­dence that the actions they take rea­son­ably may some­times may be con­strued by any per­son of sound think­ing that their actions are clear­ly in fur­ther­ance of the com­mis­sion of crimes.

Members of the rank and file of the Police force as well as aver­age Jamaicans always knew that the jus­tice sys­tem only pun­ished the very poor.
As police offi­cers we wit­nessed first-hand the def­er­ence with which peo­ple with mon­ey were treat­ed by the Courts.
On the rare occa­sion that a mem­ber of the finan­cial élite finds himself/​herself before the courts, the process which got them there was expo­nen­tial­ly dif­fer­ent than that of the dut­ty foot bway who was just brought in the back of the old jeep.

In fair­ness their crimes usu­al­ly are of the white col­lar nature so it may rea­son­able be con­tend­ed that-that their lev­el of entan­gle­ment with the police need­ed not be with hand­cuffs lying on the floor of the jeep.
Though there is a cer­tain degree of truth to that , the incom­pe­tence, and the licky licky nature of the police high com­mand made any inves­ti­ga­tion of their involve­ment in more seri­ous crimes an impossibility.

As it was twen­ty and twen­ty five years ago,so is it today. Only dif­fer­ence is that today the depart­ment has a litany of for­ward lean­ing named depart­ments which does noth­ing but turn out the same lev­el of incompetence.
Police have always com­plained about the lax way that mag­is­trates and judges han­dled dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals they worked hard to remove from the streets . In their own defense many of those judges pushed back argu­ing that they are mere­ly mak­ing sure that cas­es which came before them were prop­er­ly brought and when that was done crim­i­nals were appro­pri­ate­ly dealt with.

Both sides had a point both sides were lack­ing. My dear friend Mister Basil Reid was hat­ed by some cops. Judge Basil Reid was reviled by many as New York state African American Judge Bruce_M._Wright  was reviled by NYPD cops.

Many cops argued that judge Reid was too lenient and was inter­est­ed only in turn­ing crim­i­nals back onto the streets.
Judge Reid was a kind and lenient man , that was a giv­en and yes judge Reid was less tol­er­ant of cas­es lan­guish­ing on the dock­et in his court­room. He would sim­ply dis­miss the case if after a few men­tion dates the pros­e­cu­tion’s case was not ready. I had no prob­lem with Mister Reid . I made sure my cas­es were ready and he was quick to use me as his token cop who got things done the cor­rect way .

I loved and admired judge Reid but even with the best pre­pared case he relied too heav­i­ly on sus­pend­ed sen­tenc­ing . I was not always hap­py with his sen­tenc­ing method­ol­o­gy but I learned that I was look­ing at it from the per­spec­tive of a street cop who worked hard to remove crim­i­nals from the streets .
It took me some­time to rec­og­nize that he was see­ing these men as peo­ple who erred and deserv­ing of a sec­ond chance when they appeared before him all pen­i­tent and look­ing pup­py eyed.
Some Judges were bet­ter able to sort through what appear before them while under­stand­ing the dif­fi­cul­ties of appre­hend­ing dan­ger­ous criminals .
Their hon­ors mis­ter Donald McIntosh and his wife came to mind . Exemplary jurists.

But there were oth­ers like Lenslie Wolf who rose through the ranks to become Chief Justice . That Wolfe could have attained the office of Chief Justice was a sear­ing indict­ment to the direc­tion in which the sys­tem of jus­tice was headed.
In 2000 an Attorney named Humphrey McPherson sued the then Chief Justice Lensley Wolfe for slander .

McPherson com­plained in his affi­davit that on May 25, 2000 Wolfe had mali­cious­ly abused him in the pres­ence of his client Stanley Mason and oth­er attor­neys, by say­ing to him, ‘See de brave man deh. Him brave … him a write feisty let­ters, bout him want dis­qual­i­fy judges. Which judge a go hear him case. Time is the mas­ter, it’s only a mat­ter of time.’

McPherson claimed that Wolfe’s remarks had seri­ous­ly injured his char­ac­ter and rep­u­ta­tion as an attor­ney and brought him into pub­lic scan­dal, odi­um and con­tempt. He argued that the words were cal­cu­lat­ed to dis­par­age him or to intim­i­date him in his work as an attorney.
Lensley Wolfe sim­ply denied that he berat­ed McPherson. McPherson claimed that he suf­fered shock and injury, loss and dam­age and suf­fered great humil­i­a­tion and shame in public.

Now this case rep­re­sent­ed the clas­sic case of fowl fight in which a cock­roach has no busi­ness but I talk about this case because Wolf flat­ly denied every abus­ing McPherson .
That’s it !
But Lensley Wolfe an abra­sive and uncouth per­son did not have to wor­ry about hav­ing to be held account­able when he alleged­ly said “Which judge a go hear him case” ?
Humphrey McPherson had the ter­ri­ble luck to have Basil Reid hear his case and I believe we all know how that case ended.
Reid tossed the case alleg­ing the stan­dards of slan­der was not met.
http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​7​6​5​4​6​_​A​p​p​e​a​l​-​C​o​u​r​t​-​s​t​r​i​k​e​s​-​d​o​w​n​-​l​a​w​y​e​r​-​s​-​s​l​a​n​d​e​r​-​s​u​i​t​-​a​g​a​i​n​s​t​-​c​h​i​e​f​-​j​u​s​t​ice

Whether or not Lensley Wolfe slan­dered McPherson we may nev­er know . What I do know is that Lensley Wolfe had a his­to­ry of being an uncouth class­less bul­ly who did­n’t care whom he berated .
If he thought he could get away with it.

For years as a judge at the Gun court and oth­er courts he open­ly dis­re­spect­ed police offi­cers who allowed him to get away with it.
One morn­ing I arrived at the Gun court 5 min­utes after my case was called to Lensley Wolfe’s harsh and abu­sive tongue.
Now in order to under­stand my ire at being ver­bal­ly abused by Wolfe , one would have to under­stand what my sched­ule looked like start­ing at 8:00 am the pre­vi­ous day when I arrived at work.
I worked until 1:00 Pm then got a break to return at 6:00 pm the same day. After arriv­ing at 6:00 Pm I worked through the night cul­mi­nat­ing at 8:00 Am .
After leav­ing work at 8:00 I ran home took a show­er , dressed , grabbed a cup of cof­fee and stopped off at the Half Way Tree Resident Magistrates Court offices to leave a charg­ing affi­davit(Information) in anoth­er case then dash off to get to the Gun Court at 10 05 am.

After tak­ing a tongue lash­ing I took a tac­ti­cal deci­sion to end Wolfe’s bul­ly­ing of cops once and for all if I could.
I point­ed to the pris­on­er in the dock and told Wolf cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly “there was the ene­my” , I’m not .
I remind­ed him that his pow­ers end­ed once the court was adjourned mine went across the coun­try and 12 miles out to sea.
The rest of the con­ver­sa­tion drew admi­ra­tion and much cel­e­bra­tion from many of my col­leagues from all over the Island for weeks as word got out that final­ly some­one stood up to Wolfe’s bullying.

Lensley Wolfe nev­er looked me in the eyes ever again after I told him I would fight him all the way to the Privy Council in his own Courtroom.
I encoun­tered him after that at the Constant Spring Police Station in a cor­ri­dor a, on see­ing me he bolt­ed back the way he came and ducked into an office.
I don’t know whether he slan­dered McPherson but the arro­gant brava­do McPherson detailed sound­ed eeri­ly close to what Wolfe would say .
Unfortunately for the Plaintiff Humphrey McPherson the judge hear­ing the case was Basil Reid.
He stood no chance.

Over the years the face of the courts have changed sig­nif­i­cant­ly , unfor­tu­nate­ly not for the bet­ter . The court now finds itself a part of a cabal of incom­pe­tence, col­lu­sion and com­plic­i­ty. Neither of these char­ac­ter­is­tics bode well for the Jamaican peo­ple who have seem­ing­ly moved on, and accept­ed both the risks and the rewards to be derived from a crim­i­nal state.

Imagine if we ever ced­ed to the temp­ta­tion of a Caribbean Court of Appeals as a final court to air our grievances?