Tivoli Enquiry Offers Idea How A Caribbean Court Of Justice Would Operate..

The People’s National Party (PNP)Administration in Kingston is doing all in it’s pow­er to influ­ence Jamaicans to ditch the British based Privy Council as Jamaica’s final Court of Appeals and replace it with the Caribbean Court of Justice based in Trinidad.
The Opposition Jamaica Labor Party(JLP) which has a stronger record on the rule of law is opposed to the measure .
This pub­li­ca­tion sees many prob­lems with Jamaica mov­ing to the CCJ based on sev­er­al factors.
The argu­ments in sup­port of the CCJ are weak and friv­o­lous and is not sup­port­ed by facts , nei­ther is there a foun­da­tion in place to deal effec­tive­ly with the points raised by those opposed to the move.

See : JAMAICA SHOULD VOTE “NO” ON CCJ

Pride in coun­try and the region is impor­tant but it is hard­ly a rea­son to remove some­thing which has worked and replace it with some­thing which is unproven and for all intents and pur­pos­es seem head­ing for fail­ure at least as far as caribbean Islands sign­ing up is concerned.
Thus far only Barbados, Belize and Guyana retain the CCJ as their final court of appeals, it is impor­tant to note that despite the fact that the Court is based in Trinidad that nation has not moved to adopt the court as it’s final court of appeals.
It is cer­tain­ly not in the inter­est of Jamaicans for our coun­try to pur­sue this course even when we still have the Queen of England as the Constitutional head of state.
Doing so would effec­tive­ly be plac­ing the cart before the horse and for no good rea­son but to feel good.

This medi­um and this writer (not a lawyer) has sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly point­ed to the hor­ri­ble state of the Jamaican crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. I con­sis­tent­ly point­ed to the vast defi­cien­cies with­in the sys­tem which I wit­nessed as a law enforce­ment offi­cer in our coun­try between 1982 and 1992, which has some­thing to do with my deci­sion to exit the stage after only a decade despite my love for the job.
All objec­tive observers will con­clude that the sys­tem has got­ten expo­nen­tial­ly worse over the years, a fact which arguably has some­thing to do with the lev­els of crime in the coun­try today.

This writer have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly point­ed to the fact that at the heart of this is the fact that the Country’s Judges are far too lib­er­al. I have con­sis­tent­ly writ­ten in this medi­um about that fact, detail­ing com­pre­hen­sive cas­es where sit­ting Judges have sup­plant­ed the laws with their own bias­es and decide uni­lat­er­al­ly that they will turn crim­i­nals loose and in oth­er cas­es cir­cum­vent the process to ensure that cer­tain well-con­nect­ed peo­ple are nev­er found guilty of the crimes for which they have been charged.
I have argued that this has cre­at­ed a sce­nario which has the man on the street sub­se­quent­ly decid­ing not to obey laws because of their belief that the laws only apply to them and that the well-con­nect­ed are free to com­mit crimes with­out consequence.

RM PUSEY SHOULD BE REMOVED FROM THIS CASE NOW:

There is a sys­tem­at­ic attempt to con­fuse peo­ple in Jamaica into believ­ing that the Judiciary is total­ly untouched and untar­nished which is not based in facts.
However, more impor­tant­ly every­one has seen the way cas­es have been han­dled over the years, fair and con­sci­en­tious observers know just how easy it is for a defense lawyer to pick up the phone and call his friend the judge to influ­ence a deci­sion one way or the other.
Or worse, for politi­cians and their affil­i­ates to use var­i­ous means, from coher­sion to cor­rup­tion from pres­sure to threats and intim­i­da­tion to change the tra­jec­to­ry of a case in which they have a vest­ed interest.
What know Jamaican Drug-Lord or Community Don has ever been con­vict­ed of a traf­fic tick­et much less the mul­ti­plic­i­ty of mur­ders they order and com­mit in the country?

Even in Jury tri­als it is impor­tant to note just how easy it is for a sit­ting judge to use his/​her perch as ref­er­ee to cre­ate enough doubt which effec­tive­ly caus­es a jury to vote not guilty.
It is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult for pros­e­cu­tors to gain con­vic­tions in Jamaica, tri­al judges are open­ly hos­tile to the pros­e­cu­tion while being shame­ful­ly cozy with defense attorneys.
As a for­mer cop I saw this first hand and was amazed by it and shame­ful of the practise.
It was and still is a prac­tice which sees crim­i­nals thumb­ing their noses at the process but most of all at hard work­ing law enforce­ment offi­cers who risk life and limb to bring crim­i­nals to justice…
And oh by the way the crim­i­nals know it and are not afraid to remind police offi­cers of it..
The peo­ple pay the Police the Prosecutors and the Judges but it is impos­si­ble to tell if one sit in a court­room and lis­ten to many of the Island’s judges, they would come away think­ing that the defen­dant pays the tri­al judges.

IT’S SO MUCH EASIER TO CRITICIZE WHEN YOU DON’T HAVE TO FACE THE BULLETS….

If Judges are inca­pable of under­stand­ing their roles in the dis­pen­sa­tion of Justice in Jamaica how can we sup­port their region­al col­leagues to be fair and impartial?
As I have said repeat­ed­ly, Jamaican Lawyers would have you believe that their pro­fes­sion is one of fideli­ty and strict ded­i­ca­tion to the cause but the facts say otherwise.
Lawyers become Judges.
Most of the Island’s Lawyers attend­ed one of the three law schools in our Region, the Norman Manley Law School in Jamaica, the Hugh Wooding Law School in Trinidad and the Eugene Dupuch Law School in the Bahamas . Many across the region know each oth­er, the risk is sim­ply too great for more corruption.

MANY JAMAICAN LAWYERS ARE NOT ABOVE BOARD, THEY SHOULD NOT EXPECT TO GET SPECIAL TREATMENT WHEN THEY BREAK THE LAWS…

Many peo­ple in the Caribbean have con­fi­dence in the Privy Council as their final court of appeals not because they are une­d­u­cat­ed old colo­nial­ists who want to hold onto the final ves­tiges of slavery.
They do so arguably because they under­stand well that the sys­tem in the region is not near­ly infal­li­ble nei­ther is it free from the can­cer­ous ten­ta­cles of corruption.
They under­stand that it is lit­er­al­ly impos­si­ble for those ten­ta­cles to reach the bench­es of the Privy Council or expo­nen­tial­ly less like­ly so to do.
It is against that back­ground that the region has resist­ed jump­ing onto the band­wag­on to which the People’s National Party is try­ing to chain the country.

MAGISTRATE: NOT GUILTY, BUT IS KERN INNOCENT ?

Jamaicans who are intel­lec­tu­al­ly able to place coun­try over pol­i­tics will read­i­ly relate to the way sev­er­al high pro­file cas­es have gone in Jamaica, not the least of which is the Kern Spencer cor­rup­tion tri­al which start­ed with a bang and end­ed with a whim­per, thanks to the efforts of a sin­gle Resident Magistrate.
There is a par­tic­u­lar strain of anti-police bias which is not only high­ly evi­dent in Jamaican court­rooms but may be observed in the rhetoric of the wider Caribbean’s old polit­i­cal guard many of whom were edu­cat­ed at the var­i­ous cam­pus­es of the left­ist col­leges across the Caribbean region.
Many are life­long admir­ers of the likes of Cheddi Jaggan, Walter Rodney Michael Manley and oth­er left­ists who ruled and high­ly influ­enced the region dur­ing the six­ties and seventies.
Neither of those peo­ple were exact­ly known for their sup­port for the rule of law or police offi­cers who uphold the laws.

For those of you who doubt any of this take a look at this video of Bajan National David Simmons import­ed to Jamaica to chair a com­mis­sion look­ing at events which occurred in 2010 when a Jamaican crime lord Christopher (Duddus) Coke was being sought for extra­di­tion to the United States to face crim­i­nal charges.
During the peri­od in which the Island’s Security Forces sought this crim­i­nal Police offi­cers were killed, Police sta­tions were burned to the ground and scores of peo­ple were murdered.

It required the might of the Island’s Military with the help of the police just to breach the Community of Tivoli Gardens Cokes red­out where author­i­ties believed he was holed up with hun­dreds of heav­i­ly armed mer­ce­nar­ies. Coke’s Gunmen were deter­mined and ded­i­cat­ed to killing agents of the state in order to pre­vent the crime lord’s extra­di­tion to The United States.

These events played out in real time as the world watched in hor­ror, won­der­ing when did this lev­el of insur­gency take over the once pris­tine Island every­one around the world came to love.
Despite all of that, here is the behav­ior of David Simmons who heads the com­mis­sion look­ing into the events which occurred at that time.

This is the rea­son Jamaicans who want to improve our coun­try and it’s crim­i­nal jus­tice fail­ures should send the PNP and those push­ing this atroc­i­ty packing.
It is impor­tant that to do so Jamaicans not con­fuse this issue with any oth­er issue.
The mere fact that the Portia Simpson Miller Administration is push­ing this fias­co on the peo­ple in light of what you just saw in this rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­pling is evi­dence enough we should shun this.
On that basis Jamaicans must send a strong mes­sage to Miller and her anti-Jamaican cam­paign to fur­ther erode our insti­tu­tions that at least for now we are not going to dis­pense with the Privy Council.
On that basis the PNP must go.….….….….