Jamaican Judges A Large Part Of The Murder Problem/​Ask Dexter Pottinger

In order to under­stand the lev­el of law­less­ness and the astro­nom­i­cal mur­der sta­tis­tics grip­ping the Island of Jamaica, it’s impor­tant that you under­stand the crit­i­cal role vary­ing Government Agencies have been play­ing in enhanc­ing this trag­ic process.

Let’s exam­ine the mur­der of fash­ion design­er Dexter Pottinger.
Please fol­low me on this sequence of events which led to the death of Pottinger.

According to pub­lished reports, the accused killer of Pottinger is Tatoo and make­up artist Romario Brown of Rocky Valley, Stony Hill in St Andrew.

On July 31, Brown was grant­ed bail in the Home Circuit Court on a charge of mur­der, after he was arrest­ed fol­low­ing the death of Alexia Bepatt on April 8, 2016.

Less than a month lat­er on August 29 after he was grant­ed bail for the mur­der Brown was once again arrest­ed for being in pos­ses­sion of a dan­ger­ous weapon.
Brown was this time grant­ed sta­tion bail in the sum of J10,000. He was sched­uled to appear in the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court on September 19 for that offense.

The Police argue they were not aware that he was out on bail for that mur­der when he was grant­ed bail for pos­ses­sion of an offen­sive weapon.
The Police need not be defen­sive about grant­i­ng him sta­tion bail for the offen­sive weapon.
The Police have that right and respon­si­bil­i­ty to grant bail for offens­es of that nature.

The police, in this case, are also vic­tims of not hav­ing com­put­er sys­tems with data which would tell them that the arrestee is a mur­der accused out on bail.
They too are vic­tims because the lib­er­al activists who sit as judges con­tin­ue to turn the mur­der­ers loose as soon as they arrest them.

In all of this, there are crickets.
The silence is deaf­en­ing, no one is talk­ing about the fact that the jus­tice sys­tem which has been fail­ing Jamaicans for decades failed Dexter Pottinger and it cost him his life.
Sure Pottinger may have post­ed bail for Brown but if a judge did not take it onto him­self to set free a man who already killed a woman Pottinger would be alive today.

For years I have waged a per­son­al cru­sade on these very pages against these very dan­ger­ous practices.
In some cas­es, men who kill have been grant­ed bail up to five sep­a­rate times, before fac­ing the courts on the first charge of murder.

In what real­i­ty is that accept­able, that a mur­der accused would be grant­ed bail kills again is arrest­ed imme­di­ate­ly grant­ed bail, goes out and kill is arrest­ed grant­ed bail, goes out and kill is grant­ed bail, goes out and kill grant­ed bail. Then tired of not being held account­able he sim­ply hops on a flight and leaves the country.

In June of 2016, National Security Minister Robert Montague spoke to this. Said the Minister .…

“There is an instance where one man was arrest­ed for mur­der, offered bail, came out, mur­dered again, this time two times, appre­hend­ed, offered bail, came out, mur­dered again, appre­hend­ed, offered bail, took the bail, came out, mur­dered again, was appre­hend­ed, offered bail. His moth­er was active­ly seek­ing bail and the com­mu­ni­ty said ‘don’t bail him’. She insist­ed and she was killed, and the offer of bail is still on the table”.

In oth­er words, the activist judges are stead­fast­ly going to inter­pret the bail act in the nar­row way they want to advance their own agendas.
They con­tin­ue to make the argu­ments that the issue of bail ought not to be punishment.
Great point if you are deal­ing with white col­lar crimes or a man who stole some ack­ee from Mister Brown’s tree.

The Bail Act specif­i­cal­ly says that bail can be denied based on the seri­ous­ness of the crime alleged.
Bail may also be denied if the accused may abscond (mean­ing the per­son takes flight and does not show up for trial.
That deter­mi­na­tion is arrived at based on what occurred after the accused com­mit­ted the offense.
In many cas­es, judges have cast aside this par­tic­u­lar spec­i­fi­ca­tion and have ordered accused per­sons to sur­ren­der trav­el doc­u­ments to police.

The prob­lem in Jamaica is there is no nation­al data base which prop­er­ly iden­ti­fies each person.
As a con­se­quence, after com­mit­ting mur­ders and sum­mar­i­ly grant­ed bail they sim­ply pull out a dif­fer­ent pass­port, boards a flight and is gone.

But the most fun­da­men­tal point the bail act makes for not grant­i­ng bail to accused mur­der­ers is that the accused may interfere/​kill poten­tial wit­ness­es against him.
Nowhere in the world is this more crit­i­cal than Jamaica. And it’s all made pos­si­ble because the judges take it onto them­selves to decide that no mat­ter how heinous the mur­der the accused com­mits they are going to grant bail.

The next time you are about to crit­i­cize the police for not doing enough about crime take a look at these sta­tis­tics and rec­og­nize where the prob­lem lies.
Just ask Dexter Pottinger how he feels about the Judge who grant­ed bail to his killer after he was charged with murder.
In fact, ask the hun­dreds and hun­dreds of oth­er Jamaicans who have suf­fered Pottinger’s fate because some judge decides to be an over­lord rather than obey the law.

We need ade­quate changes to the bail act as a mat­ter of urgency. We need truth in sen­tenc­ing now as well.