The rush by po­lice to charge mur­der sus­pects has led to a sit­u­a­tion where faulty files lack­ing crit­i­cal in­for­ma­tion are be­ing sub­mit­ted to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions for charges to be laid.To make mat­ters worse, those files at times fail to iden­ti­fy all the peo­ple in­volved in the crime, and as a re­sult sus­pects have been freed.

Mak­ing the state­ment yes­ter­day was Sophia Chote, SC, dur­ing a con­fer­ence, ti­tled "The Death Penal­ty in the Con­text of Pub­lic Se­cu­ri­ty, Nei­ther Right nor Ef­fec­tive," at the Fac­ul­ty of Law, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine.The con­fer­ence drew a large cross-sec­tion of peo­ple, in­clud­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Ja­maica, Guatemala, Ba­hamas, Grena­da and Puer­to Ri­co.

Chote, a for­mer tem­po­rary judge and head of Al­pha Cham­bers, Port-of-Spain, said while the mur­der rate in T&T was by no means the high­est in the Caribbean, it was "cur­rent­ly gen­er­at­ing the knee-jerk re­ac­tion of a call for the re­sump­tion of hang­ings."She said it had now be­come com­mon and un­for­tu­nate for the po­lice to pre­pare what were called "ex­pe­dit­ed files" to be read by the DPP, who then de­cid­ed how charges were to be laid.

"I say it must be very dif­fi­cult for the di­rec­tor (DPP) to make these de­ci­sions, hav­ing re­gard to the fact that his as­sess­ment is stymied by the lack of a full, pre­pared po­lice dock­et," Chote said.

"When the DPP is giv­en an ex­pe­dit­ed file from the po­lice, the DPP does not see all the ma­te­r­i­al col­lect­ed by the po­lice, so the DPP is look­ing at a file which fo­cus­es on­ly on one par­tic­u­lar sus­pect (and) may not see that there ought to be in­ves­ti­ga­tions in re­la­tion to oth­er per­sons if he on­ly re­ceives an ex­pe­dit­ed file which does not con­tain all the in­for­ma­tion in the pos­ses­sion of the po­lice."She said ex­pe­dit­ed files were passed to state at­tor­neys very of­ten, and this was un­fair to the lawyers and the DPP.

An­oth­er fac­tor which ham­pered in­ves­ti­ga­tions and could al­so re­sult in cas­es be­ing thrown out, Chote said, was that there were no qual­i­fied at­tor­neys in the ser­vice, who prac­tised crim­i­nal law, to ad­vise po­lice dur­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions."There are at­tor­neys with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice, that's to say of­fi­cers who stud­ied law and ob­tained their de­grees. But to say that they are at­tor­neys with ex­pe­ri­ence in the crim­i­nal prac­tice is a dif­fer­ent mat­ter," Chote ex­plained.

The ca­pa­bil­i­ty of the po­lice was al­so brought to the fore, as Chote urged them not to be afraid to in­ves­ti­gate crimes with what­ev­er depth and width were re­quired in each case."This re­quires some courage, as the in­ves­ti­ga­tions may some­times take of­fi­cers to places where they do not like to go," she said.Chote said sev­er­al years ago, the late Desmond Al­lum, SC, ad­vised crim­i­nal at­tor­neys not to ac­cept cas­es in cap­i­tal mat­ters un­less they had at least five years' ex­pe­ri­ence.

"Un­for­tu­nate­ly, our num­ber at the crim­i­nal bar is so stretched that if we were to do that, then these peo­ple would be with­out coun­sel." She said what was hap­pen­ing was that at­tor­neys with less than five years, in fact, rep­re­sent­ed peo­ple ac­cused of mur­der at the mag­is­trates court. The ac­cused, Chote added, then changed lawyers at the tri­al stage at the High Court, which posed oth­er chal­lenges.Oc­to­ber 10 is World Day against the Death Penal­ty.

All mur­der files re­viewed

All mur­der files sub­mit­ted to the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions are re­viewed with the in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cers, a source at the DPP's of­fice said yes­ter­day.Po­lice are of­ten di­rect­ed to do fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions by ob­tain­ing state­ments from wit­ness­es, or get­ting cor­rob­o­rat­ing ev­i­dence to sup­port state­ments by oth­er wit­ness­es. Even af­ter some­one is charged, po­lice con­tin­ue to gath­er ev­i­dence against the ac­cused.

In the ma­jor­i­ty of cas­es where peo­ple are charged with mur­der, the mag­is­trate hear­ing the case com­mits the ac­cused to stand tri­al be­fore a judge and ju­ry in the High Court, on the ba­sis of the ev­i­dence sub­mit­ted by the in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cers.