The present is a time when crim­i­nals are run­ning loose cre­at­ing hav­oc in this so­ci­ety; in­deed, threat­en­ing to tear the coun­try apart and ter­rorise it in­to sub­mis­sion.

It’s sure­ly a pe­ri­od when the pros­e­cu­tion of crime should be at its sharpest and most just.  In­stead, writ­ten large across the me­dia is the in­stance of six men, im­pris­oned for 14 years pend­ing their mur­der tri­al, be­ing freed based on in­com­pe­tence by the state's pros­e­cut­ing sys­tem.In de­liv­er­ing his ver­dict in the tri­al of the six, Jus­tice De­van Ram­per­sad found that the ba­sis up­on which the men were charged was flim­sy, de­pen­dent on the sole wit­ness of the State, whom the judge deemed un­re­li­able in his ev­i­dence and con­duct.  

Ac­cord­ing to the judge, the ev­i­dence was “cir­cum­stan­tial and un­cor­rob­o­rat­ed”.  More­over, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad found the wit­ness was dri­ven by a griev­ance he held against the ac­cused men. The wit­ness was re­port­ed to have turned against those he claimed were plot­ting the mur­der af­ter a dis­agree­ment with them.

What­ev­er the truth of the cir­cum­stances of the mur­der, what stands out is the in­com­pe­tence of the in­ves­ti­gat­ing and charg­ing of­fi­cers. It is al­so an in­dict­ment on the of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions which has the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to give the go-ahead to the po­lice to charge peo­ple sus­pect­ed of crimes.  

To add to the slop­pi­ness of the po­lice is the fact that these men were put through the agony of 14 years in pris­ons in which con­di­tions are no­to­ri­ous­ly not fit for hu­man oc­cu­pa­tion.  

In such con­di­tions, the state ap­pa­ra­tus and the so­ci­ety it­self can­not be con­sid­ered to be just to al­leged of­fend­ers. More­over, as it is well known, this ex­tend­ed im­pris­on­ment of the six men with­out a tri­al is not sin­gu­lar in treat­ment and out­come. It has been in­ves­ti­gat­ed, re­vealed, and re­port­ed on by judges of the courts, at­tor­neys, even gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, and those who make pro­fes­sion­al vis­its to the pris­ons, that there are hun­dreds of pris­on­ers shov­elled to­geth­er in cells un­fit for hu­man habi­ta­tion, wait­ing for years to have their day in court.

In in­stances, many such pris­on­ers are trans­port­ed back and forth from prison and courts for months and years, the jus­tice sys­tem over­crowd­ed and deny­ing ex­pe­di­tious hear­ing of charges. There have been in­stances when such pris­on­ers have splat­tered fae­ces in the courts, and at­tacked prison guards, seem­ing­ly out of to­tal frus­tra­tion with the fail­ure of the sys­tem to de­liv­er ef­fi­cient jus­tice to them.

As a re­minder to all read­ing this ed­i­to­r­i­al, the high­est court of T&T, the British Privy Coun­cil, has placed a pre­mi­um on the need for even those con­vict­ed of mur­der, to ex­pe­ri­ence swift, ef­fi­cient, and hu­mane jus­tice to fi­nal­i­ty.

It must sure­ly be that built in­to the in­tent to pun­ish crim­i­nal of­fend­ers and to hold oth­ers in re­mand, there must be one, re­ha­bil­i­ta­tive el­e­ment to im­pris­on­ment and for those await­ing tri­al, and an ef­fi­cient sys­tem to get them to tri­al. Is the State, in fail­ing to ad­vance and mod­ernise the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, in­clu­sive of hav­ing tri­als in a rea­son­able time frame, es­pe­cial­ly for those who are held in the pris­ons, con­tribut­ing to the mad dog crim­i­nals and crim­i­nal­i­ty of to­day?