Derek Achong

The Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (LATT) has said it does not sup­port the de­nial of bail and the use of the death penal­ty to ap­pease pub­lic out­cry over vi­o­lence against women.

In a press re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, the as­so­ci­a­tion broke its si­lence and said it was ex­treme­ly con­cerned about the in­creas­ing lev­el of vi­o­lent crimes and the na­tion­wide protest fol­low­ing the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of Ju­di­cia­ry clerk An­drea Bharatt.

Al­though the as­so­ci­a­tion said that it sup­ports the de­nial of bail for peo­ple charged with vi­o­lent crimes, who are like­ly to re-of­fend if grant­ed bail, it not­ed that such pro­vi­sions were al­ready valid law.

“The call for the au­to­mat­ic de­nial of bail to some­one charged with a spec­i­fied of­fence, whether it be rape or kid­nap­ping, comes at the ex­pense of deny­ing long-cher­ished con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, such as the right to be pre­sumed in­no­cent un­til proven guilty, and ef­fec­tive­ly puts the de­ci­sion whether some­one should be de­prived of his lib­er­ty for long

pe­ri­ods of time sole­ly in the hands of the po­lice,” it said.

“This would be a dis­pro­por­tion­ate re­sponse and would con­sti­tute a jail sen­tence with­out a tri­al in an al­ready bro­ken crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem,” it added.

It al­so sought to give its views on re­newed calls to take steps to en­force the manda­to­ry death penal­ty for mur­der and in­clude rape.

“LATT is ful­ly aware that the call for the re­sump­tion of hang­ing might as­suage our col­lec­tive need for re­venge but apart from the now undis­put­ed fact that hang­ing does not de­ter crime, it serves no use­ful pur­pose to ad­vo­cate for same if the po­lice are un­able to find the per­pe­tra­tors of the many un­solved mur­ders in the first place and, if when charged, the ac­cused be­come lost in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem for years,” it said.

It al­so con­demned re­ports of peo­ple launch­ing ver­bal at­tacks on at­tor­neys of peo­ple charged with heinous crimes and ju­di­cial of­fi­cers, who some­times grant them bail.

“To ad­vo­cate a sys­tem of jus­tice with un­de­fend­ed crim­i­nal de­fen­dants is to en­cour­age a to­tal­i­tar­i­an state. Putting mag­is­trates un­der the glare of pub­lic ridicule threat­ens the in­de­pen­dence of the ju­di­cia­ry and un­der­mines pub­lic con­fi­dence in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice,” it said.

It not­ed that it be­lieved that the cur­rent Ev­i­dence (Amend­ment) Bill 2020 would not con­tribute as con­tem­plat­ed. The leg­is­la­tion has al­so not re­ceived Op­po­si­tion sup­port.

“The LATT has al­ready sub­mit­ted to Par­lia­ment that by any amend­ment to the Bill must not on­ly be work­able but must be legal­ly sound and ought not chip away in­cre­men­tal­ly at our con­sti­tu­tion­al rights and free­doms that char­ac­ter­ize a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety,” it said.

Ad­dress­ing the preva­lence of gen­der-based vi­o­lence, the as­so­ci­a­tion sug­gest­ed that in­equal­i­ty and sex­ist at­ti­tudes had to be ad­dressed through par­ent­ing and the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

Be­sides of­fer­ing to con­tin­ue to con­tribute through con­sul­ta­tion as a stake­hold­er, the as­so­ci­a­tion al­so sought to give some prac­ti­cal ad­vice on steps to im­prove crim­i­nal jus­tice.

“LATT, there­fore, re­peats its call for the prop­er al­lo­ca­tion of fund­ing to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and ap­pro­pri­ate use of re­sources that are al­ready avail­able to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to aid in the na­tion­wide prompt de­tec­tion of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, the up­grade of the Foren­sic Sci­ences Cen­tre to al­low for the time­ly pro­cess­ing of DNA and bal­lis­tic da­ta, and an in­creased ef­fi­cien­cy of the ju­di­cial sys­tem and com­pli­ment of ad­e­quate­ly trained ju­di­cial of­fi­cers and sup­port staff to en­sure a smooth and seam­less dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice,” it end­ed.