Bail for murder

Jun 20, 2008 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Acting Chief Justice, Ian Chang, has written his name on the breakfast table on every home in this land. Justice Chang has written his name on the pages of legal history. But in terms of the essence of natural law, Mr. Chang is the Cicero of Guyana. For the first time (maybe in the British West Indies) a judge has granted a murder accused bail.

If there is any good thing to have happened in this country in recent memory, it is this legal iconoclastic judgement of the Acting Chief Justice.

If anything has failed in this country, it is the legal system. Guyana’s political structure has seen periodic interventions by CARICOM to save it from collapse. It is doubtful that CARICOM and the American Government would remain inactive in the face of imminent disintegration of Guyanese society.

But which sector of Caribbean society is willing to intervene in Guyanese sovereign affair to preserve its falling judicial structure? The judicial system in this country defies logic and rationality.

How can any country achieve civilized living if its legal system has no solid foundation?
One is not referring here to any particular judge or magistrate.

This criticism here comes within a holistic framework. The granting of bail by Justice Change should galvanize all sectors in this society to focus on the far-reaching changes that the judicial system in Guyana must undergo as a matter of national emergency.

One form of morbidity that undermines democracy in Guyana is the length of time it takes for justice to be dispensed.

Decent human beings have grown old and have died without having their rights recognized by the courts. People’s lives have been destroyed either because they went to jail wrongfully, were wronged by their employer or sought legal redress for sins committed against them but never saw their cases come to light.

This is a crime against justice and fair play. I know of public servants in the PNC’s reign and under the present regime that were dismissed without just cause, sued but never got their day in court. Either they migrated years after or they died while waiting for the plea to be heard.

It is a mockery of justice in every conceivable sense of the word for a person to be deprived of an income because of illegal firing yet is never allowed to be compensated by the courts because of the delay sickness that characterizes our judicial process.

How can any government or judiciary in a country demand respect from citizens when these citizens know that the fulcrum on which freedom in society rests is non-functioning? That fulcrum is the dispensation of justice.

There are land disputes, landlord/tenant cases, wrongful dismissal suits, and hundreds of similar civil contentions that are yet to be determined by the High Court of Judicature more than a decade after papers were filed.

A large number of criminal matters are still awaiting action in the Appellate Court years after the court documents were sent over to Kingston. I know how it feels. In 1990, I was banned from using the Colgrain Swimming Pool even though I was a legitimate member. I was ostracized because I intervened on behalf of the pool attendant.

I sued and received my court notice to attend the hearing sixteen years after, that was in 2006. Time has passed. The pool attendant vanished. The defendant is now in his seventies and I have moved on with my life becoming preoccupied with parenthood, and am no longer interested in that form of justice.

Against this horrible background of permanent delays, bail should be a right that every accused is entitled to. The magistracy in this country is an embarrassment to Caribbean jurisprudence. In Guyana bail is being used as a punishment.

The natural reflex of most magistrates is to refuse bail. An accused is then found guilty before his/her trial has started. This terrible travesty has a farcical dimension to it. When bail is granted, the sum is terribly excessive.

They say charity begins at home. The Guyana Bar Association was in order to respond to Minister Rohee’s denunciation of the granting of bail to a murder accused.

It was downright insulting to the judiciary. But the Bar Association should discontinue its obnoxious practice of legal incestuousness and speak out against incompetent magistrates who deny people justice by denying them bail.

The denial of bail becomes a nightmare when one takes into consideration what Dorian Massey wrote about the Brickdam Lock-ups in this newspaper (April 4, 08). His description would nauseate any decent mind.
Why hasn’t the GHRA written to the UN about the conditions at the Brickdam remand?

Massey deems it as a “violation of all human rights.” Where is the voice of the Bar Association when their legal colleagues, who are now magistrates, send persons not yet convicted of any crime to that hell-house?
Freedom will only come to this land when the law begins to function.

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