Help me understand the DPP’s words in the Donald Rodney appeal

Mar 30, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – I doubt there is a high school kid that doesn’t know the function of a magistrate and judge. They know that court is a battle between a prosecutor and a lawyer. They know the judge’s role is that of a referee, who listens to both sides and make a judgment based on evidence.
If there is no evidence, the school kid knows the judge and magistrate in 99.99 percent of court cases will free the accused. The school kid does not have to be educated on the role of the prosecutor. The prosecutor is half of the courtroom battle, the other half being the defence lawyer. The prosecutor wants you to be convicted because the prosecutor is acting on behalf of the state that charged you because it feels you committed an offence for which you should be convicted.
Now the courtroom becomes an intriguing story when the prosecutor no longer sees merit in the trial because there is no evidence – circumstantial or physical – to present to the referee (judge or magistrate). In that case the trial does not start and the referee frees the accused. All of what is written in the above lines here is jejune because everyone knows this. But everyone does not know how dystopian is a country called Guyana and that in Guyana abnormality, irregularity, inexplicability and irrationality, which are negative values in other countries, become the norm here.
This explains the boring build up to my point. I am getting there so bear up with me. Now the school kid knows that once the prosecutor withdraws the case, the referee cannot disagree. The referee in law cannot proceed with the trial. There cannot be a trial because a court battle is between two persons – prosecutor and defence counsel.
Perhaps the famous case of the IMF chief is a potent example of the power of the prosecutor in a trial. Dominic Strauss-Kahn was the head of the IMF when a hotel maid, Nafissatou Diallo, accused him of rape. Given the global status of Strauss-Kahn, the news shocked the world. Prosecutors filed a motion in court to drop all the charges. The judge could not have refused the motion. In the motion, the district attorney informed the judge that Diallo was not a credible witness and there is no evidence from which they could proceed with the trial. Ms. Diallo turned out to be an unreliable witness, who was a systematic liar.
This will not happen in Guyana. In fact the opposite happens. The prosecution team informed Magistrate, Judy Latchman, that they charged the wrong person. In what could only be a bizarre moment in a court room in any part of the world. Ms. Latchman remanded the wrongly charged person.
So livid I was that I wrote a letter to the Judicial Service Commission asking for an inquiry into the magistrate’s conduct on the bench. I subsequently received a reply that informed me that after an inquiry, it was found that the magistrate did not act improperly. For more of my complaint against Ms. Latchman, see this newspaper’s report of April 27, 2014, and my column of March 11, 2014, headlined, “Small minds pursue Ashni Singh not Judy Latchman.”
We come now to Donald Rodney, the brother of Walter Rodney. The Commission of Inquiry into his death laid the blame on the state, unambiguously implicating President, Forbes Burnham. So cruel was Burnham’s presidency that the state charged Rodney’s brother, Donald, who almost died when the bomb exploded in the car killing Walter. Disgraceful magistrate, Norma Jackman (deceased), convicted Donald and sent him to jail in one of the Caribbean’s most sickening cowboy trials.
After 40 years, the appeal is now being heard. Don’t forget Walter Rodney’s party, the WPA was in government from 2015 to July 2020 with two of Walter’s closest comrades – Drs. Rupert Roopnaraine and Clive Thomas – holding substantial state positions. Last week when the appeal was heard, representing Donald was a PPP parliamentarian, Sanjeev Datadin.
The DPP told the three Court of Appeal Judges that there is no evidence against Donald. Then the same DPP uttered a few words that were in direct contradiction with her no-evidence statement. She said that the charge was validly instituted. Can someone explain this disjuncture or is it a mambo jumbo dance in a dystopian society, which all Guyanese are accustomed to? Someone please assist me here. If there is no evidence in 1982 when Donald was charged for possession of ammunition, why then was he charged? What about the Burnham dictatorship falsely charging people? Here is my favourite French saying, “God is dead, Marx is dead and I’m not feeling too well myself.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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