WHEW! AT LAST there is a public forum looking at the rights of ordinary people in Barbados and involving those who practise and enforce the law.
If there have been similar fora in recent times, I do not readily recall them; but the intention and details of the new Justice Mediation Project, coordinated by journalist and calypsonian Peter Adonijah?Alleyne, purport to develop an informative partnership between civilians and the judiciary.
Two of its upcoming sessions will look at matters involving searches, seizure and unlawful arrest, as well as squatting and the rights of landlords and tenants. Another session on vending is slated for later in the year.
These are extremely burning issues and must not only be ventilated, but a way forward proposed towards updating some of our rather archaic related laws, so that fair play will eventually obtain for the citizen or visitor and the responsibilities of those enforcing the law will be crystal clear.
With this in mind, I’m hoping that as these monthly sessions continue at the I’Akobi Youth Resource Centre on Tweedside Road, the controversial topic of confessions, especially those purportedly given by suspects in police custody, will arise. These are often the basis – in many cases, the only, sometimes very shaky, prop – of convictions in our law courts.
Having covered the magistrates’ courts and Supreme Courts as a young journalist and since then having followed criminal matters, particularly in the High Courts, I have witnessed attorneys and accused persons argue strenuously against the admission in court of these so-called confessions.
And even with the voir dire – commonly called a “trial within a trial” which seeks to determine the admissibility of evidence and/or the competency of a witness – those following the case in open court are left none the wiser as to whether the confession was in fact signed voluntarily or under duress.
In other words, it most often comes down to the police’s word against that of the accused.
Though never having practised or studied the law, I am a citizen and have therefore always found this issue vexing and dangerous, especially when the sole nexus between the accused individual and the criminal charge – whether it be murder, rape, theft or assault – is the written confession statement, produced by the police and signed by the accused, but denied, often with excruciating intensity, by the accused person at trial.
While there will be some accused persons who have indeed committed the crimes with which they are charged, only God knows how many innocent people, especially poor, black Barbadians, have been sentenced wrongfully on the basis of a confession statement obtained by beatings and prolonged torture.
Just last year, then Opposition Senator Arthur Holder, in calling for an overhaul of the justice system to get rid of archaic and antiquated “inequities”, suggested using the latest technology so that police may video-record interviews with accused people in their custody. He also suggested reducing the police’s dependence on “so-called confession statements” – his words – in trials.
Holder, a practising attorney, made the suggestions during debate on the Penal System Reform (Amendment) Bill, 2010.
Also last year, a high court judge described the police’s handling of a gun and ammunition case as “disgraceful” and vowed to express her displeasure in writing to the Commissioner and the Police Complaints Authority. This was after the notes of a doctor in the case revealed severe new bruises to the abdomen of accused man Nybingi Greene, who had given an alleged voluntary confession statement the previous day.
The matter ended with the judge refusing to admit the said statement and instructing the jury to return not-guilty verdicts against Greene.
Prominent lawyers have been quoted over the years in reference to people going into police custody in what would normally be considered good physical and mental shape, but leaving “otherwise”.
“Every other case I do, there is a confession, and most of those people say it was not voluntary, that they were either beaten or threatened . . . . This is now accepted by Barbadian society,” current president of the Bar Association, Andrew Pilgrim, was quoted as saying back in May, 2009.
Damning evidence, I dare say!
Section 72 of the Evidence Act 1994, amended in 2007, deals specifically with the tape recording of interviews between police and suspects, which would improve the quality of major cases. It states, among other things, in subsection (2):
“Evidence of the confession or admission is not admissible unless, (a) the confession or admission was made in circumstances where it was reasonably practicable to tape-record the confession or admission [or] the questioning of the person and anything said by that person during that questioning were tape-recorded.”
Imagine how thorough such cases could be with recordings or video as proof, even though some involved in the process would argue that this is not always practical.
But amid the repeated calls for better construction of cases, especially those which lead to conviction on the sole basis of confession statements, I commend the Rastafarian community on the upcoming sessions. These should be an eye-opener for many Barbadians, who see several current practices as the norm until they directly affect them or their loved ones.
The laws of the land, ideally made to protect the populace, are to be obeyed but even more so to be tested and tried – thereby creating a far more informed and educated public.
