ATTORNEYS WANT MORE DETAIL ON HOW MOTTLEY’S SUGGESTIONS FOR ADDRESSING REGIONAL CRIME WILL WORK
By Emmanuel Joseph
A prominent local defense attorney has labelled as myopic and lacking in specifics, a number of suggestions made this week by Prime Minister Mia Mottley on how to arrest growing crime and violence in the region.
Criminal lawyer and former president of the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) Verla De Peiza gave this assessment as she joined other defense attorneys on Wednesday in reacting to the Prime Minister’s recommendations on a regional approach to tackling the scourge.
When Mottley spoke at Monday’s Regional Symposium on Crime and Violence as a Public Health Issue at the Hyatt Regency in Trinidad and Tobago, she suggested that the exchange and rotation of judges across jurisdictions, the creation of a CARICOM arrest warrant, the deconstruction of archaic laws governing the police and the cooperation of forensics departments are some of the mechanisms necessary to get a handle on the burgeoning crime problem.
The Barbadian political leader said that it is critical to address jurisprudential developments which are allowing people on multiple murder charges to get bail, saying that across the Caribbean, these individuals are shown to be the ones “causing the greatest problems”.
But DePeiza said Mottley’s statement was “very” general and hard to critique as macro policy.
“There are two critiques. One, there were no specifics, so I don’t know really how to evaluate it, and secondly, it was myopic in that it focused on the traditional criminal justice flash points; and by that I mean: the courts, the police and that side of things,” the legal counsel told Barbados TODAY.
“But the social aspect of our crime issue remained unspoken to. By that I mean, having a purpose-driven education system, so that it is inclusive of all of the strengths that people have, and there are proper options before our young people from an early age. That includes diagnostics because a lot of the educational issues are from a lack of diagnostics,” De Peiza argued.
She also insisted that the Prime Minister’s narrative lacked attention on the strengthening of families, and the community development projects that give a sense of both well-being and belonging.
“Those aspects of crime-fighting, the Prime Minister did not speak to. So, the sound-bites are great, but without being given the flesh, there is really not much to hold onto,” she declared.
Senior criminal lawyer Michael Lashley agreed with the Prime Minister that there needs to be major changes to the criminal justice system.
“First, there has to be a total overhaul of the criminal justice system. I will start from the point of view of suspects, when they are in custody and they are being interrogated…we don’t have any updated law, or we have not amended the Police Act to place rules and regulations to guide the conduct of police officers when they are dealing with suspects while in custody,” Lashley, a King’s Counsel, told Barbados TODAY.
“Secondly, I hear about all this talk about backlog and kinks in the criminal justice system. In Barbados, the magistrate is the first person that comes into contact with the accused, and there is no case management at magistrates’ courts. If we have case management at the magistrates’ court, a lot of these matters that are lingering to be committed, and which persons want to plead guilty to, we would be able to move the system much more quickly,” he advised.
Lashley also supported Mottley’s suggestion to expand a magistrate’s jurisdiction.
“Why should a man now have to go before the High Court, charged on one round of ammunition?…He has to be remanded, he has to apply for bail, when the end result of this matter is that he is going to get a fine. So why the magistrate cannot impose a fine in a situation like this?” Lashley asked.
He explained that before the law was amended, magistrates had the power to deal with matters under the Firearms Act.
“Why is it now that we cannot allow the magistrates…even if you allow them to deal with up to 10 rounds of ammunition, to deal with it? Over that, you can go to the High Court. I don’t see why that can’t be done? Then there are matters like indecent assault, and matters under the Forgery Act, that should be dealt with summarily by a magistrate,” the leading criminal attorney contended.
He also complained that there is a lack of adequate attention paid to suspects who want to plead guilty
from the time they are charged, and fast-tracking these people through the system so they could either serve a custodial or non-custodial sentence.
“We are not drilling down to that or dealing with it in the most efficient way. Why can’t we assign a judge or magistrate to deal strictly with getting rid of persons who want to plead guilty at the first instance and fast-track it through the system,” he suggested.
On the Prime Minister’s call for an exchange of judges and magistrates within the region and the creation of a CARICOM arrest warrant, Lashley said he would first have to see the specifics of these to better appreciate how they could work before commenting.
But he expressed reservations about Mottley’s call for the pooling of resources on forensics laboratories in the region.
Lashley, a former Government minister during the Democratic Labour Party government, is concerned that in Barbados, the forensics lab is not working, yet, in his experience, items of evidence are reported to be sent there.
emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb
