Deputy Chief Magistrate Mark Wellington did the correct thing by dismissing the case against Anita Annamunthodo. After 11 months, the DPP had failed to appoint a State Counsel to prosecute this case, and the investigating officer, PC Hamilton, never had the courtesy to grace the court with his presence.
In balancing the scales of justice, the magistrate could not ignore the fact that Anita was in jail awaiting trial, because she could not raise the bail of $7,500.
The law is that she must be presumed innocent until proven guilty, and it is unacceptable for any citizen to be detained at the State’s pleasure without a trial.
What is more, the magistrate would have issued a stern warning to the prosecution to get its act together, or else on the last few occasions when the case was called. The prosecution would have had advance notice and warning that unless a lawyer was appointed and PC Hamilton was present on the next occasion, the case would be thrown out.
While billions of dollars are being spent on a Carnival centre, a new residence for our Prime Minister and a stadium in Tarouba, the criminal justice system is in tatters. We need twice as many magistrates and courts, a competent professional police service, more attorneys in the office of the DPP and, of course, a DNA lab.
To be fair, the DPP has been complaining about starvation for quite some time. When asked to respond to the long delay of some eight months in the filing of the murder indictment against Ryan Sagar for the June, 2003, murder of Debbie Ann Ramnath, Mr Henderson complained about understaffing, and said the delay was caused by “a severe lack of resources.”
The judiciary needs to do its part in kicking the State in the right place. Far too many judges and magistrates continuously and endlessly adjourn cases out of an understanding for the “position of the State.”
All are equal before the law, and it is not the function of the judiciary to sympathise with the State. By so doing, they might nurture an unconscious bias that is conducive to the kind of maladministration and inefficiency that have come to characterise the entire public service.
It is a simple question of prioritising public expenditure and understanding that the administration of justice must come before luxuries such as a Carnival centre, a diplomatic centre at the new residence of the PM, and the Tarouba stadium.
The Privy Council took the bull by the horns when Caribbean courts were sympathising with the massive backlog of cases that led to the ridiculous state of affairs that appeals by prisoners, who were sentenced to death, took as long as seven to ten years to surface.
In an excellent piece of social engineering, it said: “Their Lordships are very conscious that the Jamaican Government faces great difficulties with a disturbing murder rate and limited financial resources at its disposal to administer the legal system. Nevertheless, if capital punishment is to be retained, it must be carried out with all possible expedition. Capital appeals must be expedited and large legal aid allocated to an appellant at an early stage. The aim should be to hear capital appeals within 12 months of conviction.”
This benchmark set by the Privy Council was greeted with a roar of approval by regional practitioners, who were fed up with the contemptuous treatment of the administration of justice when it came to allocation of scarce resources.
Locally, in the Maha Sabha radio licence case, Justice Carlton Best rejected the attempt by the State to rely on public service bureaucracy by commenting: “The lack of staff and inefficiency in the public service, the change of venue (of the ministry), political directorate and policy should not be allowed to stand as justification for the differential treatment of the Maha Sabha.”
The sodomised, mutilated, murdered bodies of babies Emily Annamunthodo, Sean Luke, Radha Pixie Lakhan and Akiel Chambers are a constant reminder of why we need an effective and expeditious criminal justice system.
We failed them while they endured a lifetime of rape, torture and humiliation, and now, we are failing them again, as we deny the justice their memories deserve. How many more must die before we fix the leaks in the justice system that let so many off the hook without a fair trial?
By doing the right thing, Mr Wellington has focused the spotlight on the real issues that plague the criminal justice system. In an election year, when $600 million is going to rush through the system like a dose of salts, is our malfunctioning system of justice anywhere on the government's agenda?
By Anand Ramlogan
2007-04-22
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2007-04-23
Anand Ramlogan’s commentary, ‘How many more must die?’ (Guardian 2007-04-22), shines a spotlight on dilapidated, disconnected, and neglected systems, lacking accountability and still operating partly in the dark ages.
The Anamunthudo case he referred to is representative. It is necessary to overview the salient features of the case to highlight the scale of systems and individual failures.
From media coverage of the case the following are known:
Section 90 of the Constitution of Trinidad & Tobago gives certain powers to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP). Where it is proper to do so he may:
• …institute and undertake criminal proceedings against any person…
• …take over and continue any such criminal proceedings that may have been instituted by any other person or authority..’
• Exercise these powers ‘…in person or through other persons acting under and in accordance with his general or special instructions.’
With power comes responsibility and duty. It is reasonable to enquire of the DPP:
Turning to Social Services:
Is it not fair for an average reasonable person to wonder whether:
Contrast the way Anamunthodo’s case was dealt with compared to Shawn Parris’s.
On 11th February 2004 acting Director of Public Prosecutions Roger Gaspard, told Justice Herbert Volney in the First Assize Court in San Fernando that the DPP (Geoffrey Henderson) had taken a decision to discontinue the proceedings on the charge of murder and to re-indict Parris for manslaughter. But it is clearly documented that Shawn Parris had confessed the following: "I saw the victim coming out the doorway, heading towards her car. She greeted me, smiled... then she opened her door-the front driver door. I looked directly at her and squeezed one shot off the gun. Then she started screaming. She asked for someone to help her. Uncontrollably I squeezed another round and another round and another round. At that time she was slumped down on the passenger side of the car and I squeezed another round again at her." A perplexed Justice Volney commented, “This was a classic case of premeditated killing for money — a contract killing, an unlawful killing with malice aforethought…. It was the good fortune of the prisoner to avoid the sceptre of death by hanging”. In other words the core legal requirements for murder, of actus reus, mens rea and intent, were blindingly obvious. Parris promptly pleaded guilty to manslaughter and escaped the hangman’s noose! The rest is now history.
But take Anamunthodo – she has admitted publicly to living in chronic poverty. She was not charged with murder. Some might say it was just child neglect and abandonment associated with a filicide. So where are we now? Are unlawful homicides caused by the cold-blooded pumping of lead into the chests of innocent strangers in contract killings less contemptuous crimes than chronic neglect and abandonment associated with filicides? I don’t think so. Why therefore was Anamunthodo’s case treated so differently to Parris’s? Would Parris have been allowed to walk free as easily, given the same circumstances surrounding Anamunthodo? Or would Marlon King be allowed to get off without a trial? I don’t think that you would think so.
In the eyes of the public Anamunthodo is ‘nobody’ compared to Prof Vijay Narayansingh and the late Chandra Narayansingh. But justice is to be served equally to all, for all. On the one hand we have seen the DPP making Herculean attempts to secure a conviction on Shawn Parris; out in front using powers, when it was unusual for him to need to. Why was Justice Volney so minded to say what he did (above)? In the Anamunthudo case however, average people might be led to think that the DPP sat on his hands for 11 months when he definitely needed not to.
No – what we have seen recently is not justice, or the way justice should be seen to operate. In the last five years there have been several cases that pointed to a faltering justice system. How are we to look upon all this? While possibly the machinery of justice is in much needed repair or overhaul, the dark shadows cast by events in the Anamunthudo case compel me to ponder whether the faulty output of the system is primarily due to the collective failures of its ‘operators’. But we need to look further and higher! Who at the helm is accountable for overseeing the actions of these ‘operators’? Have they been all asleep, intoxicated or visited by insanity? Is it not reasonable to ask these questions?
It is apparent to many that abandonment and neglect may have been factors associated with Amy’s death and now similar factors risk contributing to the death of justice in Trinidad and Tobago.