Gail Alexan­der

Crim­i­nals are fo­cus­ing on in­tim­i­dat­ing wit­ness­es rather than killing them in or­der to make le­gal cas­es col­lapse, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie said yes­ter­day.

Je­re­mie was re­spond­ing to points made by UNC MP Sub­has Pan­day in Low­er House de­bate on the Ev­i­dence (Amend­ment) Bill. Je­re­mie said crim­i­nals had found that it "makes no sense" to kill wit­ness­es any more and fo­cus on get­ting wit­ness­es to change their sto­ries and un­der­mined their cred­i­bil­i­ty. It was there­fore im­por­tant to en­force the bill's pro­vi­sions which in­clude video record­ed state­ments, Je­re­mie added.

On Pan­day's state­ments, Je­re­mie said that one of the is­sues the UNC had ex­pressed con­cern over–video record­ings–could be dealt with via the pro­posed rules to be for­mu­lat­ed by the ju­di­cia­ry. Je­re­mie ve­toed Pan­day's sug­ges­tion to have video tes­ti­mo­ny tak­en at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre since he said po­lice sta­tions–like in Bel­mont and Tu­na­puna–had al­ready been out­fit­ted for re­ceiv­ing state­ments. Je­re­mie said state­ment-tak­ing was part of po­lice work to be done in po­lice sta­tions.

He said cur­rent reg­u­la­tions al­ready pro­vid­ed for the pres­ence of a Jus­tice of the Peace to be present when state­ments were tak­en.

Je­re­mie, deny­ing that Gov­ern­ment was en­act­ing the bill due to ter­ror­ism, said it was to re­cal­i­brate the an­ti-crime thrust. PNM MP Colm Im­bert, re­ply­ing to Pan­day's con­cerns, as­sured that the rules to gov­ern the sub­mis­sion of video state­ments were be­ing for­mu­lat­ed by the ju­di­cia­ry and will be de­bat­ed by Par­lia­ment. Im­bert said a draft of the rules had been ob­tained. He cit­ed sev­er­al ex­am­ples of rules to en­sure the in­tegri­ty of the process. Im­bert said video record­ings would al­low for ju­ries to judge–from the de­meanour of a wit­ness–whether the wit­ness is telling the truth if there are in­con­sis­tent state­ments.