JAMAICA’S JUSTICE SYSTEM ON TRIAL?

As the tri­al of Dance-Hall per­former Adijia Palmer o/​c Vybez Kartel winds down, pret­ty much all the Nations 2.7 Million peo­ple liv­ing on the Island are anx­ious­ly await­ing the ver­dict. Jamaicans in the dias­po­ra are also tuned in to what appears to be the tri­al of the decade in Jamaica. I’m not quite sure why there’s so much atten­tion being paid to a bleached-skinned dance hall Dj , when the Kern Spencer tri­al is still yet to be concluded.

JUSTICE SYSTEM ON TRIAL !!!

Kartel has already beat­en one mur­der rap, main­ly because wit­ness­es refused to show to tes­ti­fy against him. Which brings us to the ques­tion of whether the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is itself on tri­al. It is a self per­pet­u­at­ing phe­nom­e­non when wit­ness­es are afraid to tes­ti­fy against accused crim­i­nals. Criminals are embold­ened and nat­u­ral­ly becomes more brutish. Police and Prosecutors around the world rec­og­nize that depend­ing on eye-wit­ness­es accounts to pros­e­cute mur­der­ers, is a fool’s errand. The sole remain­ing count of mur­der against Kartel from all accounts should be a pret­ty easy case to pros­e­cute and prove. But things are not always clear-cut ‚or easy in Jamaica. Even though there has been no real chal­lenge to the text evi­dence by the defense, the despi­ca­ble unpro­fes­sion­al actions of mem­bers of the police depart­ment has seri­ous­ly jeop­ar­dized the case. A crit­i­cal police wit­ness had to agree to defense grilling that the cell-phone used by the defendant,which was a cru­cial exhib­it in the case was used while it ought to have been locked away.

Supreme Court Building King Street Kingston Jamaica

With mur­ders at all time highs and climb­ing, the JCF has not shown that it has a clue how to bring the killers of almost 1,600 Jamaicans a year to jus­tice. Courts dock­ets are clogged and over­flow­ing with cas­es which will nev­er be pros­e­cut­ed. This means dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals will face no con­se­quence for their crimes. The Judges are lib­er­al beyond belief. On the rare occa­sion in which an accused is found guilty the pun­ish­ment met­ed out is usu­al­ly an affront and insult to the vic­tims involved in the crime.

There has been calls from cer­tain quar­ters, sug­gest­ing that to fix the sys­tem court dock­ets should be purged. Meaning that in cas­es where wit­ness­es are reluc­tant to tes­ti­fy , those cas­es should be purged , there­by reliev­ing the log-jam with­in the sys­tem. On the one hand, it does seem like a good idea. After all keep­ing them there serves no use­ful pur­pose if wit­ness­es will nev­er tes­ti­fy. However on the oth­er, it seem like giv­ing Amnesty and carte-blanch to mur­der­ers Rapists and oth­er Felons.The idea of start­ing afresh is only use­ful if all the Agencies respon­si­ble for the dis­pen­sa­tion of Justice are brought up to first world stan­dards. Otherwise throw­ing out old cas­es would be embark­ing on a very slip­pery slope.