The Tribune

By NICO SCAVELLA

Tribune Staff Reporter

nscavella@tribunemedia.net

ATTORNEY Fred Smith has bashed the government’s “swift justice” initiatives and called the country’s judicial system a “machine that is just moving forward to get convictions”.

Mr Smith said while he acknowledged the presence of a “terrible crime problem” in the country, the government’s proposal of swift justice is “no justice” because it “does not protect the rights of people who are brought before the courts”. He called for “balance” in the judicial system and for the creation of a “public defender’s office” to counterbalance the affairs of the public prosecution’s office.

He also said he gets “very upset” when Attorney General Allyson Maynard-Gibson is “talking about swift justice” because swift justice is about “ensuring that a process is followed which protects the rights of the victims and the rights of the innocent.”

“We cannot throw the baby out with the bath water,” he said at the Rotary Club of East Nassau on Friday. “If we are to maintain ourselves as a democracy, if we are to respect the rule of law, if we are to protect and uphold fundamental rights, we have to have the political will to put funding and resources in defending those who are accused of crimes and prosecuting those who are accused of crimes. You cannot have it all one-sided.

“Judges work hard, juries work hard to try and balance it. To this date after 40 years of the PLP and FNM promising legal aid for people who are charged with serious criminal offences, you still don’t have it. So it’s left to lawyers like myself or any other number of lawyers in the past or currently to represent indigents.

“That’s what’s happening now. People who are brought before the courts aren’t getting a fair shake. That’s a big problem, and that’s been going on since I’ve been called as a lawyer almost 40 years ago.”

In September Mrs Maynard-Gibson said things were moving in the right direction with the government’s attempt to eradicate the “revolving door on bail”.

Her statements came after the Christie administration outlined restrictions in a Bill to amend the Bail Act that seeks to lessen the number of violent offenders who receive bail, modernise the judicial system and curb crime in the country.

Under the existing Bail Act, people charged with such major crimes as murder, armed robbery, rape, possession of automatic weapons, possession of a firearm with intent and kidnapping are prohibited from receiving bail except when the court believes such people have not been tried – or are unlikely to be tried – within a reasonable time, so long as certain conditions are met.

Under the Bill to amend the Bail Act, applicants, as opposed to the prosecution, will have the onus of proving that they should be granted bail. The court will be forced to consider the safety of the victims of their crimes when deciding whether to grant bail.

Mrs Maynard-Gibson had said that if the government continued the “swift justice initiatives” and continued to “as is necessary, tweak our laws to keep us in accordance with 21st century standards,” it anticipated that “citizens will no longer feel there is a revolving door for bail”.

Mr Smith was of a different opinion, however. He said that swift justice would not stop people from committing crime if the death penalty “hasn’t stopped people from murdering or killing.” He said the problem that people who are accused of a crime face is that “the justice system is not just” and is a “machine that is just moving forward to get convictions”.

“What I often say to people is, you will appreciate how bad and unjust the system is when it’s your mother, brother, sister, uncle, aunt or child that gets swept away through a ‘swift justice system’,” he said. “That’s when you’re going to understand how unhumanitarian it is.

“The private legal aid assistants really can’t help the huge thousands of cases that need legal aid. We should have a public defender’s office just like we have a public prosecutor’s office. And the object of judicial proceedings should not be trying to create a factory system of quickly dealing with the cases whether or not you’re administering justice.

“So I get very upset when I hear the Attorney General talking about swift justice, because swift justice isn’t simply getting a conviction, it is also ensuring that a process is followed which protects the rights of the victims and protects the rights of the innocent, because we are all innocent until proven guilty.”