The Prosecution’s Case Against Patrick Powell Was Beyond Malpractice, It Was Malfeasance.…

As the full shame of the Patrick Powell acquittal hits conscientious Jamaicans both at home and abroad, absent the discussion are the voices of the people who made that travesty possible.

The Island’s Commissioner of Police said he is sat­is­fied that his offi­cers did the best job they could as far as the Investigations are con­cerned. He point­ed to the Prosecuting Attorney’s state­ment laud­ing the work of the police.
I long gave up on Commissioner Williams as a cred­i­ble part of the solu­tion required to stem the tide of crime on the Island. To be fair to him how­ev­er this mur­der hap­pened before he became Commissioner of Police.
As a serv­ing mem­ber of the Police depart­ment dur­ing the 80’s to the ear­ly 90’s I under­stood the val­ue of being cre­ative , in many cas­es using noth­ing to cre­ate some­thing. Usually by just allow­ing myself to thing. Oh for the pow­er of the mind.

Nevertheless, this Commissioner of Police has had more than ample time to del­e­gate to one of the sev­er­al Deputy Commissioners or Assistant Commissioners to vet the case to see how it could be strength­ened. Granted of course that they would have had an idea what to do.
The Present Assistant Commissioner of Police who has port­fo­lio for crime Élan Powell and I served togeth­er as young offi­cers. The Constant Spring CIB was one of the best places any young Detective could learn the art of Investigations, work­ing with peo­ple like Rudolph Dwyer , Anthony Hewitt, Garnett Daley, and Noël Asphall.

Neither of these guys by them­selves were com­plete (who is) but hav­ing had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn what they had to impart in total­i­ty was invaluable.
Powell fan­cied him­self a schol­ar of sorts, inso­far as the depart­ment he heads is con­cerned that sense of com­mon sense and just good old fash­ioned inves­tiga­tive tech­niques have not trick­led down. Or to be char­i­ta­ble still remain to be seen.
It real­ly does not require rock­et sci­ence to do a bet­ter job today even with the lack of resources which still plague the department.
If of course the stat­ed goal is to do a bet­ter job.
The idea that Commissioner Williams and the pros­e­cut­ing attor­ney believes they did a great job is exact­ly the prob­lem with what is intrin­si­cal­ly wrong with the system.

In anoth­er few days no one will be talk­ing about the fact that Patrick Powell walked out of a court­room with­out hav­ing to account for the death of Khajeel Mais.
It will be the prover­bial nine day won­der, for many it was expect­ed , after all only the very poor go to Prison in the country.
That is well known to most peo­ple, it is a sig­nif­i­cant dri­ver of crime on the Island.
Politicians on both sides are duplic­i­tous­ly silent, so too is the legal fra­ter­ni­ty. Why you ask ? This is their cre­ation , the polit­i­cal class is quite hap­py to sit tight and wait out this 9 day won­der, soon no one will be talk­ing about this.
After all peo­ple get killed in Jamaica dai­ly , they sim­ply wash the blood away and com­mence set­ting up the sound sys­tems for the wake. Roll out the jerk drums and posi­tion the food carts, mur­der is busi­ness , this is how peo­ple eat.

In fact there are now calls from the dance­hall com­mu­ni­ty for the free­ing of one of their own Vybz Kartel after Patrick Powell was freed. Hey why not ?
I say sim­ply open the prison and jail doors and let every­one out. After all why both­er lock­ing up any­one if the process is going to be selec­tive about who gets prosecuted ?
A total­ly legit­i­mate call from the dance­hall com­mu­ni­ty . If the laws do not apply to one it should not apply to anyone.
The loop­holes in the law which allows a com­plain­ing wit­ness to says one thing in a writ­ten Affidavit, and then recant after being paid off or threat­ened have always been there.
That a wit­ness cru­cial to the pros­e­cu­tion could thumb his nose at the process with­out con­se­quence was always there.
That state­ments are not done using audio and video record­ing devices is beyond mal­prac­tice, it’s malfea­sance . How about this notion that the Police have done all they could mis­ter Commissioner ?
You can record any­thing on a sim­ple smart­phone . I would be hap­py to donate a cou­ple of video cam­eras to enhance the process.

That a mur­der sus­pect could refuse to turn over a poten­tial kill weapon when ordered to do so is out­side the bounds of out­ra­geous it is ulti­mate insanity.
The specifics in the Khajeel Mais Murder case are such that even if Patrick Powell beat the case of mur­der against him (which he should­nt) there is enough which should con­vict him and cause him to spend decades in prison.
♦ Lying to the American Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) is a seri­ous crime. Many Americans, includ­ing politi­cians have found them­selves in prison for hav­ing for­got­ten that fact.
♦Refusing to hand over a weapon which forms part of a crim­i­nal Investigation ‚( much less a homi­cide inves­ti­ga­tion) should elic­it a penal­ty of at least ten years in prison.
♦ Any evi­dence of wit­ness tam­per­ing of any kind should elic­it a min­i­mum penal­ty of five years imprisonment.
The dumb politi­cians on both sides of the divide bang on desks while hurl­ing insults and mind­less jokes at each oth­er in the Parliament instead of fix­ing these sim­ple prob­lems. There is a rea­son for their inac­tion , if these loop-holes are plugged some of them would cer­tain­ly be in jail.
They won’t be fixed because the peo­ple are con­tent with their liv­ing con­di­tions. They have resigned them­selves to the idea of sub­sa­ha­ran type exis­tence while telling them­selves they are on the path to a Scandinavian type out­come, replete with the par­lia­men­tary style democ­ra­cy inher­it­ed from the for­mer British colonizers.

There is a cer­tain type of grandiose idio­cy which becomes evi­dent when so many of them are allowed to express them­selves . It gen­er­al­ly leaves some­one like myself an eter­nal opti­mist con­vinced that there is not much hope for a turn­around because too many do not see the need to.
Then there are those who are actu­al­ly aware that the coun­try is in deep trou­ble but are inca­pable of under­stand­ing that the con­cepts they cling to will do noth­ing to fix the problem.
This is what Liberalism has done to a peo­ple . This is the result of social­ist lan­guage which teach­es that peo­ple are enti­tled to things they haven’t earned.
A Utopian con­cept of a com­mu­nal shar­ing of the pro­ceeds of the hard work of oth­ers while oth­ers sim­ply take what they haven’t earned.
That same con­cept has been applied to deal­ing with the exis­ten­tial threat seri­ous crime poses.
The huge cracks in what the Island once thought of as a jus­tice sys­tem has been exposed as a gap­ing chasm. No longer can there be any real plau­si­ble con­tention that there is a jus­tice sys­tem on the Island, with­out evok­ing howls of sar­cas­tic laugh­ter from peo­ple in the know.