Latest update July 27th, 2024 12:59 AM
Aug 10, 2014 Features / Columnists, My Column
The law is something that I would never be able to fathom. It does not really take into consideration what is right or wrong; it deals with facts presented by the better person who could debate. Sometimes it punishes the innocent, not because the person is innocent, but because someone was able to cast enough doubt in the mind of the jurist who becomes the final arbiter.
I have met men who were sent to jail although they did not commit the crime. In one case, the individual who was found guilty actually said that while he did not do this crime he was not too upset at the unjust decision. He said that he had committed more serious crimes and was never punished.
He was able to take the sentence philosophically, but there are others who do not see things in the same light. At one time I wondered about the man who happened to attend a meeting at Independence Park which was then Parade Ground. He happened to be standing behind a woman who had a bag slung over her shoulder.
Someone went into her bag and dropped her purse in front of the man standing behind her. The police came and there they found the purse. They proceeded to arrest the man, a public servant at the time, prosecuted him and caused him to be sent to jail for six months.
The public servant lost his job and had his life in Guyana wrecked during those colonial days. He left Guyana and I never heard of him again.
Then there was the Customs officer whom Magistrate Paul Fung-a-Fat jailed although the officer was nowhere near the drug find. Some drugs had been found in the officer’s home, placed there by his friend with whom he shared accommodation. Argue as much as the lawyer did, he failed to persuade the magistrate.
It took a rather speedy appeal to get him out. The then Chancellor of the Judiciary, Justice Desiree Bernard, in freeing the Customs officer, said, “I am sorry that I can’t give you back your life.”
On the other hand, people who killed were allowed to walk free because there was a scintilla of doubt. And of course, because one jurist once said that it is better to let ninety-nine guilty people go free than to hang one innocent man, that has become the mantra.
There was the robbery of a woman who had just left a commercial bank in the city when a man followed her to Robb Street in the vicinity of the Guyana Post Office and at gunpoint, proceeded to rob her. The man then escaped on a motorcycle that was being ridden by a friend.
One of my reporters provided me with the footage from a security camera and I aired it on television. Not long after, a man called me to say that he had been charged with the crime and if I could provide the footage in court to help him clear his name. He told me that the footage would prove conclusively that he was not the gunman.
I obliged. I took the footage to the court, but never got the chance to show it because the law demanded that the person who gave me the footage should come to the court. I got the reporter to come to the court, but the law further demanded that he provide the person who gave him the footage.
This person was a Chinese national who could barely speak English. Besides, this Chinese national wanted nothing to do with going to court, for reasons best known to himself. The upshot of all this is that the court never saw the video footage.
The lawyer even begged the magistrate to view the footage to satisfy herself, but she declined, citing some aspect of the law. On Friday, I read that the man who asked me to bat for him in court was jailed for four years for the crime. Indeed he cried when the sentence was handed down.
As a layman I simply cannot understand why there must be so much rigmarole when it comes to accepting evidence. To my mind, the man would never have asked for the video footage to be shown in court if he knew that it would convict him. That was enough for me to accept that he was innocent of the crime.
I am left to wonder at the number of innocent people who have done and who are serving jail time because of how the law is structured. I cannot blame the magistrate, but I can surely criticize the legal system.
One argument is that the footage could have been tampered with, but one fact remained, the suspect would have been clearly identified.
For such reasons, I thank the Almighty that I never strayed from the straight and narrow. I also trained my children to do the same, because while some people say that the jail was not made for dogs, it surely was not made for innocent people.
I value my freedom, because it is the greatest gift that could have been bestowed on me. To surrender it to the prison system is not my idea of life. I cannot see how I could surrender myself to being told when to take a shower, when to sleep and where not to go.
For the young man who must now serve four years, I am sorry to say that at some time he must have strayed from the straight and narrow for him to be so targeted by the police.
BE THANKFUL AND GRATEFUL TO THE FOREIGN EXPLOITERS
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