Judges Releasing Murder-accused On Bail A Major Driver Of The Killings On The Island…

In a recent arti­cle, I asked the police fed­er­a­tion and the Police Officers Association to become more proac­tive in their crime-fight­ing strate­gies. Among those strate­gies should be data col­lec­tion on the judges who con­tin­ue to sup­plant the rule of law with their own per­son­al feelings.

Jamaica is caught up in a death grip, being crushed between a young and vio­lent gen­er­a­tion of killers and a judi­cia­ry decid­ed­ly intent on exact­ing its’ own will, regard­less of the con­se­quences to the public.
The Government (includ­ing the oppo­si­tion par­ty) and the law-abid­ing seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion want the police to bring the mur­der num­bers down; what they are unwill­ing to do is to remove the hand­cuffs from the hands of law enforcement.
However, more detri­men­tal to the nations’ sur­vival is the dan­ger the judi­cia­ry pos­es to the every­day sur­vival of ordi­nary Jamaicans.
The con­tin­ued prac­tice of judges grant­i­ng bail to vio­lent mur­der accused, some sev­er­al times over while they await tri­al on pre­vi­ous mur­der charges, is a dan­ger­ous prac­tice that must be stopped imme­di­ate­ly as an impor­tant part of reduc­ing the killings on the Island.

This writer has been a con­sis­tent voice stand­ing with law-abid­ing Jamaicans and the police against the vio­lent killers and their facil­i­ta­tors in the judi­cia­ry. I have writ­ten dozens of arti­cles on this sub­ject detail­ing not just incon­sis­ten­cies in the grant­i­ng of bail and sen­tences hand­ed down but the rea­sons judges give for grant­i­ng bail while ignor­ing a salient pil­lar of the bail act, the pos­si­bil­i­ty to re-offend.
To begin with, the penal­ty for mur­der is already far too lenient; some mur­der con­victs are giv­en a mere seven(7) years for tak­ing some­one’s life. This tells us that at the bare min­i­mum, the penal­ty for mur­der on the Island does [not] have any deter­rent effect based on the high num­ber of killings report­ed to police each year.
As rep­re­hen­si­ble as these sen­tences are, the issue of bail is at the heart of the prob­lem, one that the leg­is­la­ture refus­es to attend to.
Judges trained at the Islands’ lib­er­al-pro-Marxists col­leges and uni­ver­si­ty tend to have a defense lawyer men­tal­i­ty, more detri­men­tal to the process; they share a belief that they have a duty to reha­bil­i­tate vio­lent offend­ers, con­se­quences to the pub­lic be damned.
Instances of mur­der accused grant­ed bail before tri­al com­mit­ting more mur­ders are well doc­u­ment­ed; some com­mit­ting more mur­ders are again arrest­ed and charged and grant­ed bail up to six times before fac­ing the first trial.

In recent times com­mis­sion­er Antony Anderson spoke out on this sub­ject, the com­mis­sion­er is a pub­lic ser­vant, and as such, he was con­strained as to what he could say and how he said them.
However, the mes­sage was clear, yet the stu­pid prac­tice of releas­ing vio­lent mur­der­ers on bail con­tin­ues unabated.
As this prac­tice con­tin­ues, the police report­ed that one of two men in their cus­tody con­nect­ed with Wednesday night’s killing of three young sib­lings in Irwin Heights St James was out on bail on oth­er mur­der charges.
Eleven-year-old Peta-Gaye Cook and her 19-year-old twin broth­ers, Givaughn and Givaughnie Stewart, were gunned down at their residence.
We can­not ignore the con­sti­tu­tion­al and moral premise of inno­cent until proven guilty; how­ev­er, the state has the duty to pro­tect life as its’ first obligation.
As pub­lic ser­vants, judges are bound to fol­low the law and use their dis­cre­tion in all mat­ters they adju­di­cate. Supplanting the law with per­son­al feel­ings and lean­ings has tak­en over the Jamaican judi­cia­ry with dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences to the pub­lic, as we con­tin­ue to see.
The Islands’judges con­tin­ue to claim that they fol­low the law, but they are actu­al­ly fol­low­ing the parts of the bail act that serve their own interest.
They claim cor­rect­ly that bail should not be used as pun­ish­ment; what they fail to address is the part of the act that stip­u­lates that bail can be denied (a) based on the seri­ous­ness of the crime the accused is charged with & (b) the like­li­hood that the offend­er will re-offend.

In a recent arti­cle, I asked the police fed­er­a­tion and the Police Officers Association to become more proac­tive in their crime-fight­ing strate­gies. Among those strate­gies should be data col­lec­tion on the judges who con­tin­ue to sup­plant the rule of law with their own per­son­al feel­ings when they sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly return mur­der­ers onto the streets as soon as they are arrested.
We need to know their names have a detailed under­stand­ing of their judi­cial his­to­ry so that we can bet­ter mount a defense against their assault on the rule of law.
We can­not have unelect­ed judges rid­ing roughshod over the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem in the cor­rupt and oth­er­wise uneth­i­cal man­ner they have been engaged.
We know they love to trav­el on their for­eign visas; it is time that we approach the Justice depart­ment and Home Office with their pat­tern of crim­i­nal sup­port and have their visas revoked.
Let them stay in the filth they are help­ing to create.
Jamaica is an extreme­ly vio­lent nation; author­i­ties say gangs are respon­si­ble for 70% of the coun­trys’ homi­cides, which rose 10% last year to reach 47.7 per 100,000 inhab­i­tants, giv­ing it the world’s high­est mur­der rate.
In a June 2017 arti­cle in one of Jamaicas’ dai­ly papers Omar Hawthorne a lec­tur­er at one of the Islands’ pre­mier insti­tu­tions of advanced learn­ing, had this to say about judi­cial corruption.
Often, when we talk about judi­cial cor­rup­tion, the image is that of judges tak­ing bribes. However, judi­cial cor­rup­tion is a lot more. It includes all forms of inap­pro­pri­ate influ­ence that may dam­age the inde­pen­dence of jus­tice and may involve any play­er with­in the jus­tice sys­tem, includ­ing lawyers and admin­is­tra­tive sup­port staff. The ques­tion of cor­rup­tion is not only a mat­ter of rela­tions between judi­cial per­son­nel and court users; it is also about inter­nal rela­tions in the judi­cia­ry.
I strong­ly sub­scribe to most of the find­ings and sug­ges­tions with­in the Integrity Commission’s pol­i­cy paper linked here.
https://​www​.van​der​bilt​.edu/​l​a​p​o​p​/​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​/​0​3​2​7​1​1​.​T​h​e​G​l​e​a​n​e​r​.​pdf

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.