If The Govt And Judiciary Do Not Care About Crime, Prosecutors And Police Should.

Not hav­ing worked in law enforce­ment for a long time, I am restrained in my com­ments as it relates to spe­cif­ic pro­to­cols and indi­vid­ual cas­es before the courts.
Nevertheless, I can­not help but won­der about the num­ber of cas­es before the courts, (seri­ous cas­es) in which crim­i­nal defense attor­neys are able to make suc­cess­ful no-case sub­mis­sions.
If there is enough evi­dence for a com­pe­tent pros­e­cu­tor to present a case to the courts for tri­al, how can that case end up being tossed by a mag­is­trate or judge for lack of evi­dence?
The default response is usu­al­ly to blame the police, I get that, but these cas­es are giv­en to pros­e­cu­tors who are all lawyers.
I assume they have to read the case files, look at the evi­dence, see what is miss­ing, (if any­thing), talk to inves­ti­ga­tors to see how out­stand­ing bits of evi­dence may be secured in time for the trail, and tight­en up what­ev­er loose ends may exist.
These are not exam­ples of police incom­pe­tence, they are pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al incompetence.

“There is no greater task giv­en any man, than to bring the mur­der­er of the inno­cent to jus­tice.“
That line stuck with me, it was a line deliv­ered by Instructors to the small class of young offi­cers, of which I was a part, dur­ing Detective train­ing at the Police Academy, the year was 1991.
All these years lat­er, one of the most bur­den­some thing for me, is to know that there are mur­der­ers walk­ing around among law-abid­ing cit­i­zens hav­ing tak­en inno­cent life/​lives.
In a per­fect world, we expect that all mur­der­ers will be brought to jus­tice, at least that’s my expec­ta­tion. We live in a world that is far from per­fect, but that does not pre­clude us from striv­ing for the best that we can do. Which brings us to the qual­i­ty of the pros­e­cu­tors.
They are the ones who are sup­posed to vet the cas­es they are pre­sent­ing to a judge or jury. How can they not say to inves­ti­ga­tors, “could you go back and secure this, and this bit of evi­dence before we go for­ward”?

Whenever pos­si­ble, it is always bet­ter when inves­ti­ga­tors sit with pros­e­cu­tors and go through the evi­dence before mak­ing an arrest.
By doing so Police do not find them­selves backed up against the clock to either charge or release an arrestee.
There is no deny­ing the fact that the Island’s crim­i­nal defense lawyers are hard­ly any bet­ter than the crim­i­nals they defend.
It is also well known that the major­i­ty of the mag­is­trates and judges are woe­ful­ly inad­e­quate when it comes to the fair and equi­table dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice. Simply put, the Islands judges are not gen­er­al­ly on the side of crime vic­tims.
Like so many oth­er areas of civic life, the Island’s tri­ers of facts have not demon­strat­ed that they under­stand the harm vio­lent crim­i­nals are caus­ing the soci­ety.
With that said, poor case prepa­ra­tion is the pre­rog­a­tive of the pros­e­cut­ing Attorneys and police inves­ti­ga­tors, not judges and defense lawyers. Even in cas­es pre­sent­ed to the courts which were inves­ti­gat­ed under the new enhanced anti-gang leg­is­la­tion, we see dan­ger­ous crim­i­nal accused, one after anoth­er, peeled off from the list of accused on tri­al, and let go by the courts.
Since the Government and the Judiciary do not care enough about the nation’s crime emer­gency, pros­e­cu­tors and police must.

In one of the most shock­ing dis­plays of inves­tiga­tive and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al incom­pe­tence, three peo­ple, includ­ing a for­mer sol­dier, were freed of mur­der charges on February 6^th, after their lawyers made suc­cess­ful no-case sub­mis­sions on their behalf.
The case involved the killing of Oshane Burke on September 15, 2009. Eleven years after the police arrest­ed one accused at the body-dis­pos­al site jus­tice delayed was jus­tice denied.
Oshane Burke was employed to for­mer JDF sol­dier Kareem Campbell, and Nadine Moore, who oper­at­ed a busi­ness. They were charged with the mur­der of Burke along with an employ­ee, Damion Smith, whom the crown alleged­ly con­spired to kill Burke for steal­ing cash and bot­tles and liquor from Campbell and Moore.

The body of Oshane Burke was alleged­ly found with mul­ti­ple stab wounds along the Port Royal main road, where a police patrol team spot­ted a man act­ing sus­pi­cious­ly in close prox­im­i­ty to it.
Prosecutors used the man as it’s star wit­ness, but the wit­ness admit­ted in court that blood­stains were found on his clothes when he was appre­hend­ed by the police, and that he attempt­ed to flee on the approach of the offi­cers.
There was no evi­dence led as to whether the blood was that of the deca­dent, even though that would have been one of the eas­i­est things for the pros­e­cu­tor to nail down from the start.
According to local report­ing, [the defense also brought to the pros­e­cu­tion’s star wit­ness’s atten­tion that he had told one of the police offi­cers on the spot that he nev­er meant to com­mit the crime. He denied telling the police this. However, the police gave evi­dence to the contrary.

If the police tes­ti­fied that the wit­ness admit­ted to the crime, how could they not have charged him as the prin­ci­pal killer?
If he was the actu­al killer, why would they bend over to make him a pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness in order to haul Kareem Campbell, Nadine Moore, and Damion Smith into the net?
It seems that inves­ti­ga­tors and pros­e­cu­tors gam­bled on get­ting every­one they could and end­ed up los­ing every­thing.
As such, four poten­tial­ly guilty accused may have been set free by the courts when all should have paid for their crimes.
This is not the way that par­tic­i­pants in crime are sup­posed to be han­dled.
It seems to me that if pros­e­cu­tors had charged the wit­ness with the mur­der and offer him a lighter sen­tence, it is quite pos­si­ble that they would have nailed the oth­er accused and they would have nailed him as well.

Worst-case sce­nario, even if the three oth­er accused, who were able to pay for high pro­file crim­i­nal defense, were able to beat the case, the man caught on the scene would have paid for the mur­der of Oshane Burke. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Oshane Burke may have been less than an ide­al human-being/c­i­t­i­zen, none of us is per­fect, and so no one deserves to be mur­dered and dis­card­ed like garbage, while the killers are allowed to walk free.
The killers have the sys­tem on their side, it is time that those tasked with bring­ing the mur­der­ers to jus­tice remem­ber the charge, ““There is no greater task giv­en any man, than to bring the mur­der­er of the inno­cent to jus­tice.”

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.