The Jamaican System Is Unable To Try Cases In A Timely Fashion, It Is Bad All Around…

The Jamaican system cannot try cases in a timely fashion; it is bad all around…It destroys lives, and, more importantly, the inability of the justice system to deliver timely justice for the Jamaican people is contributing exponentially to the continued rise of violent crime.

It is lit­er­al­ly impos­si­ble for a defen­dant to receive a fair and just tri­al in Jamaica under the present sys­tem that delays tri­als for years, some­times decades. One of the build­ing blocks of our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is that defen­dants have a right to a speedy tri­al. It is dif­fi­cult for any­one to counter that as far as that right goes, Jamaicans are not being abused by the system.
Shortages of court­rooms and court staff, i.e., pros­e­cu­tors, stenog­ra­phers, judges, etc., are a part of the rea­son the back­logs are so sig­nif­i­cant, result­ing in post­poned tri­als and jus­tice being denied all around.
There is anoth­er press­ing issue that has impact­ed jury tri­als, and that is find­ing jurors to try cas­es. According to the Supreme Court’s own assess­ment and opin­ions writ­ten by judges of the supreme court, cas­es are adjourned (sine die), mean­ing adjourned with­out a tri­al date being set, but that the case may be brought back before the court when cir­cum­stances atten­dant to the adjourn­ment are ironed out.
A grow­ing vol­ume of cas­es over­whelms pros­e­cu­tors who can­not take action against cer­tain sus­pects, who then com­mit more crimes. Victims or wit­ness­es become less will­ing to tes­ti­fy as time pass­es and their mem­o­ries of events grow fog­gy, weak­en­ing cas­es against per­pe­tra­tors. I believe this goes to the heart of the nation’s dan­ger­ous­ly high vio­lent crime rate.

In 2011 a high court judge wrote his rea­son for adjourn­ing a case sine die.  The crim­i­nal case was brought before the court as far back as 1999; since then, the case has had 38 tri­al dates. In 2011 when he adjourned the case with­out set­ting a new tri­al date, the cir­cum­stances that caused the pre­vi­ous adjourn­ments still exist­ed. The Deputy Director of Public Prosecution informed the court that the sub­stan­tial rea­son for the adjourn­ments was the insuf­fi­cien­cy of the jurors.
Those who worked in law enforce­ment know what hap­pens to cas­es adjourned sine die; they are sel­dom resus­ci­tat­ed. The Prosecutor’s office moves on to new cas­es, and that crim­i­nal defen­dant is off the hook regard­less of the seri­ous­ness of the offense he committed.
The myr­i­ad rea­sons pre­vent­ing speedy tri­als are not lost on [crim­i­nals]; nei­ther are they lost on their defense attor­neys, who find inge­nious ways to get the courts to adjourn cas­es repeat­ed­ly. In fair­ness to some defense attor­neys who are not act­ing as con­sigliere to mur­der­ous gang­sters, pros­e­cu­tors some­times come up lack­ing in get­ting their case ready for trial.

The tragedy for the defen­dants who are caught up in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, inno­cent or guilty, is that the sys­tem is inca­pable of arbi­trat­ing their guilt or inno­cence in a time­ly fash­ion, and that has con­tributed to the high crime rate in the country.
For exam­ple, the police offi­cers labeled a death squad in 2011 still have not had their tri­al start­ed. The offi­cers were demo­nized by Carolyn Gomez and the crim­i­nal-sup­port­ing reac­tionary groups oper­at­ing in Jamaica under the cov­er of human rights, Jamaicans for Justice (FFJ) chief among them. These offi­cers were charged with mur­der aris­ing from police action In Clarendon as far back as January 2011.
Charges of mur­der were brought against them by the anti-police head of INDECOM Terrence Williams in April 2014, which result­ed from the death of Clarendon Most Wanted* (at the time) Martin Shand o/​c Froggie died dur­ing a police spe­cial oper­a­tions in the woods of New Longsville District Clarendon where police con­front­ed him in January 2011.
At the time of his death, Martin was want­ed for sev­er­al gun-relat­ed crimes com­mit­ted in North Clarendon, includ­ing being want­ed for the killing of one of his broth­ers in the New Longsville area.

Eight years after they were charged crim­i­nal­ly, those offi­cers still do not have a tri­al date set so that the charges against them can be heard, and they may have their names cleared.
On the 18^th of July 2022, the offi­cers who were last in court two full years ago were once again told by a judge, Leighton Pusey, that they would have to wait anoth­er three years to have their case brought up again. Judge Pusey indi­cat­ed there was a seri­ous back­log of cas­es, and he does­n’t see this case start­ing before 2025.
Attorneys for the accused police offi­cers Churchill Neita Q C and Mrs. Valerie Neita-Roberts Q C. asked the court to expire the tri­al date under pri­or­i­ty. The judge was asked to look at ear­li­er dates but indi­cat­ed the attor­neys should make a pri­or­i­ty application.
In the mean­time, the lives of those police offi­cers con­tin­ue to be on hold as they await their day in court. This is not jus­tice by any measure…

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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.