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Nov 27, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
Magistrate Ann McLennan sentenced a homeless man to prison for possession of a smoking utensil (God had to be a fool to make a certain type of people named Guyanese; let me remain an agnostic). On the very day McLennan passed her sentence on that hapless fellow, a Barbadian Magistrate jailed a Guyanese woman, Rochelle Gibson, for nine months for trafficking in half a pound of cocaine.
Do the mathematics yourself. If the homeless man wasn’t found with drugs and got a month, it is commonsensical then to calculate that if zero drug amounts to one month in prison then half a pound of cocaine would probably take you to fifty years, meaning, then, that if you are found guilty in front of McLennon with a pound of cocaine, you will get a hundred years in jail.
The Narcotics Act does not provide for sentencing of a hundred years but when you think of the crazy things that take place on the bench in this stupid, cruel, primitive land (that God forgot), then a sentence of a hundred years is quite possible,
Crazy things go on in the judicial system of God-forsaken Guyana. Magistrate Judy Latchman remanded a woman even though the Prosecutor (no, not her defence lawyer but the Prosecutor himself) did not object to bail and told Latchman that there was a bureaucratic foul-up with the police file and the woman was wrongly charged. Latchman then took on the role of the Prosecutor and denied the woman her liberty.
The President of the Guyana Bar Association, Mr. Ronald Burch-Smith told me that it was unusual for a Magistrate to do that. So incensed I was at this abuse of judicial power (talking about abuse of judicial power, look what happened to Mr. Arjoon at the New Building Society) that I asked the Chancellor to intervene.
He wrote me to say that he will place the matter in front of the Judicial Service Commission. I plan next week to ask the Service Commission for a status report of my complaint against this Magistrate.
Let me inform Latchman that I am not going to leave this complaint unattended. How about the case where Magistrate Isaacs in Berbice jailed a female teenager for six months for crossing over to Suriname without the immigration stamp?
How about the libel case brought against me by former President Jagdeo? He filed his affidavit in September 2010. Brace yourself for the insane country named Guyana. The case started in the High Court eleven months later. Do you know that may be a record not for Guyana or the Caribbean or the Americas, but for the world? But the horrific dimension about drama is that this eleven-month speed took place in a country where perhaps all libel cases see the light of day after ten years of filing.
The one that intrigues me the most (and I have to confess I am not a lawyer so the learned trial judge may be so erudite that the gentleman knows what he is doing) is, where is the acting Chief Justice (how long are they going to make him act) ruled that the Minister of Local Government did not have the legal authority to appoint Carol Sooba as Town Clerk but Sooba could continue in office. And don’t forget, Roger Khan’s lawyer, Robert Simmels said that there was a judge in the High Court in Guyana that maintained communication with Khan when Khan was hiding in Suriname. His code name is “The Oracle.”
Do you know who Oracle is? I’ll give you a clue? Here it is. Go to my November 9, 2014 column and you will see what pastry I like.
How ironic that this hapless, helpless victim could be jailed for possession of a mere smoking utensil while in the just concluded mid-term US elections, more states have voted for the legalization of marijuana. In Colorado in the US, Holland in Europe and Uruguay in Latin America, marijuana smoking is legal.
The draconian sentence for marijuana possession including the imbecilic, asinine, heartless act of jail for mere possession of the smoking utensil has been a constant feature of my world conceptualizations in my reflections since I became a newspaper columnist in 1988.
Here is an extract from, “Destroying Lives,” my November 27, 2007 column. Back then I wrote, “Ryan Bhagwandin, an 18-year- old Kaow Island resident was yesterday sentenced to three years’ (sic) imprisonment and fined $30,000 for narcotic possession. With a sorrowful look on his face, the lad pleaded guilty. Now if you read this, you would have thought it was cocaine. It was half an ounce of marijuana.”
LISTEN HOW JAGDEO WILL MAKE ALL GUYANESE RICH!!!
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