One of the essential principles of criminal law is that the state or people must prove their case beyond a [reasonable] doubt; it is a different principle than that which applies to civil cases with a lower burden of proof. I placed the word ‘reasonable’ in brackets because when defendants are brought before the courts, the verdicts must be just, whether the defendant faces a jury or *a bench trial*(*trial by a judge).
The word reasonable is intended to ensure that a defendant receives a fair trial when a competent trier of facts, be it a judge or jury, considers the full preponderance of the evidence and makes a rational decision of innocence or guilt.
Though critical to the equitable and fair dispensation of justice, the word “reasonable” was never intended to be insurmountable.
It was not intended to be a get-out-of-jail-free card for mass-murderers or to be used by left or right-wing judges to fulfill their political agendas instead of their sworn oaths to be impartial triers of facts and to dispense sentences that are commensurate with sentencing guidelines set out in law by the people’s representatives.
Jamaica’s highly leftist judiciary has been pulling the wool over the eyes of the Jamaican public for decades as it relates to this issue, and it must stop. Let me reiterate for those who are quick to criticize what they haven’t understood because they are serial critics; the importance of ensuring that a guilty verdict is beyond a reasonable doubt cannot be over-emphasized, nevertheless; it is not an impenetrable fortress to shield the guilty from being convicted.
Us Jamaicans have always been known to be a little extra and pretentious. We are deeply enamored with things over people. We indulge celebrities, even ticky-ticky Z‑list celebrities. We worship at the altar of degrees and status while denigrating the average working joe.
This mindset glorifies fakery over originality and honors and respects thieves and murderers, over honest work and decency.
It created a perfect breeding ground for the kind of country we have today in which gangsters are heroes while teachers, police officers, and farmers are treated with zero respect. It is a prime breeding ground for exploitation by those with power in both the political and legal fraternity.
It created the mentality that we can have a first-world twenty-first-century country on an antiquated, outmoded 20th-century infrastructure. Jamaicans are indoctrinated into believing that we can use white gloves on dangerous criminals and attain the kinds of society that exist in Scandavanian or some Asian societies.
Today the essential principle of *beyond a reasonable doubt* that ought to protect the innocent from wrongful conviction is being used surreptitiously to protect the guilty from consequences right before our eyes. The guiding principles that ought to engender trust and confidence in our justice system have been hijacked by the very people we appointed to be stewards of our trust.
Our country is infected with a pro-criminal cabal of leftist moles burrowed deep in the infrastructure of every part of the public sector. It is challenging to wean Jamaicans off the ideas their leftist indoctrinated leaders all gain from a single institution of higher learning. Those leftist ideas have been propagated and promulgated throughout the Caribbean to the detriment and impoverishment of the people forced to live under those policies.
The one thing standing in the way of Jamaica going the way of Venezuela, or sub-Saharan Africa, is Bustamante’s party. Even it is infected with the destructive leftist ideology that has destroyed once burgeoning societies. It took a lifetime for Andrew Holness, the present JLP Prime Minister, to realize that crime is an existential problem that cannot be reminded with finesse and soft touch. So it is not just the other side that is infected with this stupidity.
We must continue to reorient and educate the masses that a society in which criminals hold sway over the masses is a society stuck in poverty and want.
A society in which white-collar criminals exist at the top and gun-toting blue-collar criminals at the bottom is a society where those in the middle get squashed.
It is the very definition of Jamaican society today in which politicians, judges, trial lawyers, and their friends at the top and gun-toting hoodlums at the bottom devour everyone else.
It is a Jamaica in which leftist bureaucrats on the courts release the most dangerous criminals into society and then blame the police using the very principle in law designed to protect the innocent.
“Beyond a reasonable doubt.”\.
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.
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