The nation should call on the DPP to resign

Feb 21, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I am making a bold statement which is an opinion, here it is – I don’t believe in the modern world there is a judicial figure that has spoken the nonsense that has come from the mouth of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in Guyana, Mrs. Shalimar Ali-Hack.
Let us see if there is any sense or commonsense in what Mrs. Ali-Hack said. For me, my mind is made up – this judicial officer is not judicial material and the nation should demand her resignation.
Here we go. Dwane Williams was charged for multiple murders in the Lusignan massacre. Secondly, Williams became a freed man and subsequently appeared as a witness in the trial of two other men charged with the Lusignan killings.
Thirdly, attorney Nigel Hughes, in a press statement, accused the DPP of a plea bargain with Williams that freed him from prosecution for 33 murders that he confessed to while giving testimony in the Lusignan trial.
His victims included the bestial slayings at Bartica and Lindo Creek. Fourthly, the DPP responded to Hughes and said, “Not me, I made no plea bargain with Williams.” Fifthly, the DPP said Hughes contradicted himself because Williams was charged for murder; he wasn’t spared.
Sixthly, in further denial of Hughes’s accusation, the DPP pointed to a common tradition in the world, in law, where a person indicted for a serious criminal offence could give evidence in a matter for which he was originally charged. Here is Mrs. Ali-Hack in her own words; “It is an old common-law practice to allow an accomplice to an offence to testify for the prosecution.”
Seventhly, please remember that Mrs. Ali-Hack said that she does not know about any plea bargaining. If she is to be believed, then how did Williams walk free? Who removed the charge of multiple murders against him?
Here is where language comes in and this columnist finds the DPP’s use of words to be comical, foolish and downright pathetic, for which she has sullied the name of the legal community in Guyana.
Here is what the DPP is saying. John slapped Mavis on her face. The police come to John and informed him that he will be charged for striking Mavis on her face. John exclaims that he did not strike Mavis on her face, he slapped her. What is the problem here? John is making himself a jackass. There is no scientific difference between being slapped on your face to being struck on your face. If I hit you on your face with my hand, my towel, my cricket bat, I struck you on your face.
If I stole two potatoes and not a bag full of the stuff, I could be charged with stealing potatoes. But it seems from the semantic logic of Guyana’s DPP, stealing two potatoes and stealing a bag full are not the same. When you steal two potatoes you are not a potato thief, only when you steal a bag of the vegetable.
It appears that the DPP is right. She said that she never made a plea bargain deal with Williams. Here is what she means. In plea bargaining, the district attorney or DPP says to the defendant lawyer; “Look, we will not ask for a life sentence, we will take fifteen to twenty if he pleads guilty. The defendant agrees, the prosecution informs the court on the plea bargain so the judge can stay within the range the prosecution promised.
Mrs. Ali-Hack is saying that such a process never occurred. She was not involved in such a process. This writer is saying most strongly that she is talking incredible nonsense and is not fit to be in the legal profession, since law is about language and she is making a mockery of language.
In freeing Williams from the charge in exchange for his testimony as chief witness in the Lusignan massacre, Mrs. Ali-Hack made a bargain, a covenant, agreement, engagement, arrangement (whichever noun you want to use) with Williams.
What she has done is to make the silly, idiotic assertion that there was no plea involved, so it cannot be a plea bargain. The DPP wins that round of the word game. But Mr. Hughes’s position stands, in that a mass murderer (who admitted to killing 33 persons) was allowed to go free.
Remember her word “allow.” Here is where the DPP is in trouble and should be called to resign. She said in her reply to Hughes, that an accomplice could offer evidence. An accomplice can give evidence and get a reduced sentence. But Williams gave testimony as a freed man not as a charged accomplice, which is worse than plea bargaining.
Who freed him?

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