Are inquests things of the past?

Sep 07, 2008 Features / Columnists, My Column

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Something that has been haunting me for a long time and which I have had reporters query is the issue of inquests. Ever since Chief Magistrate Juliet Holder-Allen started the inquest into the killing of three men at Mandela Avenue early one morning about five years ago, there has not been another inquest in this country.
The law stipulates that every unnatural death should attract an inquest because there is need to understand how that death occurred and whether there is some criminal liability. If the death is justified or accidental, then the courts would so determine. If there is a criminal liability then the inquest would so pronounce and the state or the relatives would take the necessary action or seek compensation where liable.
Every magistrate is a coroner and is mandated to hold inquests but it seems that magistrates shy away from holding inquests with the result that many deaths are undetermined.
Recently, a lawyer was forced to petition the High Court to have an inquest held into the death of the young man who was found hanging in the Enmore lock-ups. The court so ordered, but to date, that inquest is still to be held.
Holding inquests is a crucial part of any judicial system. They help provide checks and balance. They are the instruments that cause policemen and women to think twice when they contemplate excessive force against a suspect. And of course, everyone is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
In recent times, there has been a spate of killings both by the law enforcement personnel and by criminals. It is as if human life has lost its value and in a country like Guyana with a ridiculously small population, that spate of killing should not be allowed to continue. There must be some accountability.
In the United States every killing demands attention and more so when the killing is done by the police. Of course I have seen excesses. A group of policemen shot and killed a young man whose mother called them only to help control him.
The young man jumped through a window and ran down the street. When confronted, he simply withdrew a hairbrush from his pocket as if to tell the police that he did not have anything that could exert violence. He sustained 20 bullets.
Another young man was shot almost 30 times because he reached for a cigarette lighter. In every case, the killings were justified by the Police Commissioner, but the relatives moved to the courts and are most likely to be heavily compensated.
There was the case of the Haitian who was sodomised with a broom handle while in police custody. Ranks went to jail and the man received millions of dollars in compensation.
In Guyana no such things happen, except in the case of University of Guyana student Yohance Douglas who was accidentally shot and killed. Two policemen were charged with murder and committed to stand trial in the High Courts. One won on appeal by his lawyer and the other was sentenced to six years.
There was no question of compensation for the mother of the dead youth and surprisingly, the policeman who was jailed for six years for that killing was among the ranks who hunted and killed Fine Man that Thursday.
This is not a criticism of the work of the police against violent criminals but an observation of what is so wrong in Guyana. To begin with, there are hardly secure enough prisons to accommodate violent criminals, so the society is of the view that they should be killed.
There was a time when the very society, having had enough of extra judicial killings, called for the rule of law. Anyhow, what happened was that with the exercise of restraint by the police, the criminals became emboldened, so the cycle continued.
Yet this should not inhibit the judiciary. Inquests are mandatory and if there is a rule of law then the courts should be among the foremost to uphold that rule. Without the courts the society would collapse and Guyana cannot afford to let this happen.
And when one stops to think, everything that happens today leads back to the judiciary and to the police. Parents leave their children alone and rarely are they prosecuted. If indeed they end up in a court of law, these parents tell a sad story and get away with a slap on the wrist.
Criminals appear in a court and soon it transpires that they have similar matters before other magistrates. However, they are granted bail because the prisons are overcrowded and these bailed criminals continue along their merry way.
The police, fed up with arresting them, confront them violently, often with one result. But there are no inquests, so the confrontations are never examined. The Chief Justice says that magistrates should hold inquests, but he maintains that he cannot compel them. Who can?
Perhaps there are not enough magistrates and at least one, the Chief Magistrate, recently resigned. The judicial system needs serious examination but then again, I suppose that if the examination is too stringent then the magistrate would walk into private practice, making it even more impossible for inquests to be held.

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