JUDGE : For Yourself.

I had a con­ver­sa­tion this morn­ing with a retired Jamaican teacher; I have the great­est regard for this lady; she is charm­ing and likable.
For me, there is just some­thing about some­one who has the patience and ded­i­ca­tion to spend their life edu­cat­ing others.
She was a lit­tle angry but deter­mined that she want­ed to return to Jamaica and find a way to do some­thing about how chil­dren, seniors, and the des­ti­tute are treat­ed; she expressed exas­per­a­tion and trep­i­da­tion regard­ing whether or not she could actu­al­ly make a dif­fer­ence. I told her truth­ful­ly that I had no way of know­ing whether she would be impact­ful or not, but she def­i­nite­ly will have no impact if she decid­ed to do noth­ing. I told her Rosa Parks def­i­nite­ly made a huge impact by just sit­ting down.

I strug­gled with that as a young police offi­cer in Jamaica, was I mak­ing a dif­fer­ence? I ulti­mate­ly con­clud­ed that yes, I was mak­ing a dif­fer­ence; how­ev­er, the dif­fer­ence I want­ed to make was not going to be accom­plished if I stayed with the Department. I con­clud­ed that had I stayed, I would have been behold­en and answer­able to the archa­ic inane sys­tem I was repulsed and opposed to. Ever since I depart­ed, I have strug­gled with how I can make a dif­fer­ence in a sys­tem where even those charged with being the guardians of the peo­ple’s rights and inter­ests are the very ones lim­it­ing and vio­lat­ing those rights? Every Jamaican, at home or abroad, knows that their polit­i­cal lead­ers are some­times the very peo­ple who sup­ply guns and ammu­ni­tion to their neigh­bors to intim­i­date and kill them, which allows them to stay in office, where they per­pet­u­ate the vicious cycle that keeps them, fam­i­ly mem­bers, and friends well off. The same crim­i­nal politi­cians are respon­si­ble for draft­ing and pass­ing leg­is­la­tion that would make it worse for those whose busi­ness it is to com­mit crimes.
Do you believe crim­i­nals are going to put them­selves in Jail?

Sources on the ground have con­firmed that the only rea­son Politicians are not giv­ing guns to com­mu­ni­ty activists like they are used to is that the activists have their own guns and do not need any­thing but polit­i­cal cov­er from politi­cians any­more. So they have not expe­ri­enced an awak­en­ing as some believe.
The gang­sters have their own guns, plain and sim­ple. Even so, some are still ensnared and entan­gled with street crim­i­nals who are killing their fel­low Jamaicans.
What makes this for­mer teacher’s frus­tra­tion so rel­e­vant for me is that I share the same frus­tra­tion about the crime sit­u­a­tion in our coun­try and the lack of will to take the nec­es­sary steps to once and for all estab­lish the rule of law cor­ner­stone of our fledg­ling democ­ra­cy. As is cus­tom­ary, we seek to point out the facts to come to our own con­clu­sions. As is cus­tom­ary, we are com­pelled to point to the glar­ing dis­par­i­ties in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem regard­ing how crim­i­nals are treat­ed. This runs the length of the process from how they are per­ceived when they com­mit heinous crimes to the way police are scru­ti­nized when they are cap­tured or killed, to the sen­tence giv­en them on the rare occa­sion they are ever con­vict­ed. As such, we have writ­ten a series of blogs called Jamaica’s mad lib­er­al judges. We do not write because we are opposed to the Judges, but because we are opposed to the kid gloves with which they treat crim­i­nals, there are numer­ous cas­es, too many to men­tion, where the inter­est of crim­i­nals and those who sup­port them take prece­dence over crime vic­tims. We feel this is an affront and is tan­ta­mount to pun­ish­ing the vic­tim. Criminals in Jamaica start with a huge advan­tage, from the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion to the last court of appeals in the coun­try, there are a stom­ach and an appetite of lenien­cy toward even those who have com­mit­ted the most egre­gious crimes and do so over and over again.

This has bred a don’t care atti­tude in some police offi­cers. It cre­ates a more sat­is­fied pub­lic with the jun­gle jus­tice dis­pensed by local thugs, which is usu­al­ly swift and deci­sive, or mob jus­tice, which includes mul­ti­ple com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers tak­ing the laws into their own hands. Generally, with the sen­tence of death being the ver­dict for all infrac­tions, offens­es that can range from a traf­fic acci­dent where a car hits a well-liked mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty to rob­bery or mur­der, it does­n’t mat­ter the offend­er is giv­en a death sen­tence. The sen­tence is car­ried out with ruth­less and bru­tal alacrity. If we choose to ignore the fact that the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem does not work for any­one, that it erodes the trust cit­i­zens had in the rule of law and the pow­er of the state to pro­tect them, to the point they believe report­ing crimes to the agents of the state is a waste of time. They are bet­ter served to go to the local (don) than we risk slip­ping deep­er and deep­er into the abyss of anar­chy daily.

Some argue that each case rests on its own mer­it; we agree. Some argue that a tri­al Judge knows the case and the evi­dence in each case, and as such, he or she is in the best posi­tion to make a judg­ment call one way or the oth­er. We agree. Some argue that judges should have free rein, with­out prop­er safe­guards in place, and that they should be allowed to adju­di­cate with­out over­sight from any oth­er Government branch. We disagree.

Even though mem­bers of the judi­cia­ry may not be as cor­rupt as oth­er lead­ers in oth­er parts of Government, giv­ing them carte-blanche in the dis­pen­sa­tion of judges with­out no input from the peo­ple through their rep­re­sen­ta­tives in par­lia­ment, do exact­ly what we say we do not want, we end up with cor­rup­tion, only from dif­fer­ent peo­ple. Those who argue for an unre­strained Judiciary say they argue because they are afraid of polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence, a fair­ly rea­son­able argu­ment to make. Still, if we allow judges to oper­ate with­out over­sight and restraint, we end up cre­at­ing the very sys­tem we say we do not want; we end up cre­at­ing lit­tle gods who are answer­able to no one. Their lord­ships.

Jamaican Judges are answer­able to no one, and as such, we have seen the sys­tem den­i­grate to where we are today as a nation, dan­gling pre­cip­i­tous­ly close to the abyss of being a failed state. Crime and ter­ror are ram­pant; there is no under­stand­ing or will to erad­i­cate it from our coun­try; those who lead loves it the way it is; after all, a pop­u­la­tion that does not know it deserves bet­ter, prob­a­bly does not deserve better.

As is cus­tom­ary, when­ev­er we come across a case where we feel a judge has crossed the line and has betrayed the trust placed in him/​her, we high­light the case, we com­ment. Still, ulti­mate, you are the ulti­mate judges, and it is you who should decide if we are rea­son­able in our assess­ment of Jamaica’s judges.

Daily Gleaner sto­ry high­light­ing this man.

Judge David Fraser

This Judge sen­tenced a man who bru­tal­ly raped a 12-year-old girl, stran­gled and buried her when he thought she was dead, to 12 years in prison. 

Twelve years, as bru­tal and heinous as the crime of rape is, let’s put that aside for a sec­ond, this man tried to kill this child, then buried her, which demon­strates that in his heart he felt that the deed of “mur­der” was com­mit­ted, he then went to the next step that applies when some­one kills anoth­er, dis­po­si­tion of the body, he did that.

Based on his actions, this man raped this lit­tle girl, killed her (in his mind), then buried her; she brave­ly clawed her way out of the hell he placed her in only to be raped once more and abused by Judge David Fraser, and the crim­i­nal jus­tice system.

Jamaica’s Chief Prosecutor, Paula Llewelyn, and mem­bers of the Police Force, and most impor­tant­ly, the lit­tle girl’s moth­er, felt they were once again left hang­ing by the all-mighty Judge Fraser.

Here’s what Llewelyn had to say.

Sentencing is the sole pre­rog­a­tive for His Lordship, the judge,” Llewellyn said last week Friday. She said when she got the report from the crown coun­sel in the case, she was some­what sur­prised and sad­dened because “in this mat­ter, the facts to which the accused man plead­ed guilty are extreme­ly grave.” She was, how­ev­er, quick to point out that the nor­mal pro­to­cols that obtain between Bench and Bar would pre­vent her from mak­ing any fur­ther com­ment on “this unfor­tu­nate scenario.”

Natural pro­to­cols that obtain between Bench and Bar, she said.

All Prosecutors and Judges in Jamaica are lawyers; if any­one want­ed a clear and unequiv­o­cal feel for where the ordi­nary man stands in all of this, the above statement/​slip of Paula Llewelyn’s tongue is proof pos­i­tive that they do not matter.

My whole feel­ing about this, as I have always felt, this con­nivance between Bench and Bar amounts to noth­ing more than “bull shit” for the aver­age citizen.

Here lie ladies and gen­tle­men, the rea­son why Judges must be giv­en strict guide­lines when they are deal­ing with seri­ous crimes like the ones in this case.

This poor young girl has been bru­tal­ly raped and buried once again by arro­gant Judges that get referred to as quote “his lord­ship.”

Judge for yourself