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May 17, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
Lawyers and former judges tell you that each case has its unusual or unique dimensions. A woman broke a bottle and stabbed her friend, who was pregnant at the time, to death. The guilty plea for murder becomes manslaughter once the prosecution accepts the plea. The judge, known to be a harsh judge, gave her 10 years. I don’t see a problem with that. Outside of conviction for violent rape and violent robbery, I wouldn’t deny people a light sentence. It is the liberal in me.
The same judge handed a life sentence in another manslaughter trial in circumstances similar to how the woman stabbed her friend. It was during a drunken brawl, a youth killed his friend in Berbice. An appeal has been lodged based on the reasoning of a harsh sentence. I haven’t followed the judge’s logic in both cases, but I know in my career as a media operative, I have written profusely on sentence discrepancy.
I can quote former Chancellor, Carl Singh, now that he has retired. Once while in his office to lodge a complaint about a magistrate’s action, the question of illogical magistrate sentencing came up. I can distinctly remember he told me that the judiciary had run umpteen training sessions for magistrates on sentencing guidelines, but there has been no adherence to them.
I believe each court sentence must be contextual once the law allows for variations. In the case of a guilty plea for drugs based on the weight, there is an automatic jail sentence of a certain amount of years. In such cases, the presiding officer, whether judge or magistrate has no latitude to vary the length.
Once the judicial officer can vary a sentence, then context takes over. Possession of an unlicensed firearm is an interesting situation in this country. Because of the spate of gun robberies over the past twenty-five years, a jail term is inevitable if found guilty of illegal possession of a gun. What I find is that with such a charge there is no recognition of context by the magistrate. This is where I have a perennial problem with most of the magistrates in Guyana.
You can hardly blame a magistrate for the imposition of a jail sentence when a roadblock yields an illegal gun on a taxi driver or a young soldier, or in cases where the police stop a youth who appears to be engaged in suspicious activity. It comes close to commonsense to assume that the intention was to commit a crime.
I find context is missing with magistrates when it comes to aging farmers in desolate areas who have been found with illegal weapons. The magistrate never varies the sentence on the basis that though the weapon was illegal there was no intention to commit a crime. Many farmers actually have concealed unlicensed weapons for protection.
I read a really sad case of a 65-year-old farmer last week. He was charged and sentenced to three years for illegal possession of a firearm.
While on trial, his sixty-year-old wife was hospitalized with severe diabetes. When she came out from hospital, she found out that her husband was in jail and she fainted, fell into a coma and died.
There is the fear that her sixty-five year-old husband who is also a diabetic might not survive in jail when he finds out that his wife is dead. This is my opinion – I don’t believe that 65-year-old farmer intended to rob or kill anyone. I know farmers who have illegal firearms and I know it is for their protection.
The judicial system and medical service in Guyana make a mockery of human existence in this land. When you think of what happens in our medical system, it really sickens you.
Last week a woman in Berbice turned up at the hospital; she said she stabbed herself. She was treated and sent home. She died hours after. Surely, the wound had to be life-threatening. So why wasn’t she admitted? The husband allegedly did it and he has since been charged. Too many people are dying from medical incompetence in Guyana.
An investigation was ordered last month at the Georgetown Hospital over the death of a ten-year-old who was violently kicked in the stomach, was treated and sent home. She died days after (see my column of April 3 for more details). I guess I will never stop writing about these sad realities in my country. The stabbed Berbician woman and the ten-year-old girl didn’t live to see the swashbuckling arch at Cummings Lodge.
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