The Tribune

IN this column yesterday, The Tribune offered a rebuke of sorts towards National Security Minister Wayne Munroe for ducking the issue of marital rape on the pretext that it was not in the PLP’s election manifesto – its Blueprint for Change.

We noted that of course there are many other things not in that manifesto but it hasn’t stopped the party moving to act on a number of issues, and indeed dealing with other matters as they arise.

For example, our lead story on our front page today talks of the need to deal with the NIB Fund – but hunt through the Blueprint for Change and you won’t find a policy on that laid out for the voters.

But today we want to praise Mr Munroe – for his straight answer when it comes to the likelihood of restricting bail.

Mr Munroe laid out quite clearly that any such move would have to stand up against a likely legal challenge that would go all the way to the Privy Council – and others have tried and failed in that regard.

He said that Trinidad created a law that prevented bail being granted in cases of murder – and that law lasted less than a year before being struck down first by the Appeal Court in Trinidad and then reinforced by the Privy Council.

Mr Munroe said: “We know that you cannot simply remand somebody because they’re charged with an offence – no law will permit that.

“Everyone has tried for the last 30 years; no law permits that. What the law does say is that we can remand you if your release is likely to pose a danger to the public.”

At the heart of the reasoning for this is that, of course, someone being charged is not someone being found guilty. All suspects – from the lowliest of traffic offences to the highest of crimes – are innocent until proven guilty. Depriving anyone of their liberty is a serious decision, and to do so automatically for a chosen category of crime, before any assessment of the strength of the case against them, is a measure that could in the worst circumstances be abused by authorities.

Bear in mind that for most of these cases, it can be years before they are heard by our sluggish court system. If bail was denied until the person was found not guilty, they could be locked away for four, five, six years – more. The Tribune has reported on cases that have been a decade old. It is implausible that someone not convicted of an offence could spend so many years of their life in prison.

Mr Munroe does suggest an argument has been made over public safety when it comes to approving bail – saying that “we appear to have capital punishment being carried out on our streets without trial, without appeals” and citing the “collateral damage”, saying releasing people creates a danger to the public.

That argument has gone to the Supreme Court, and may well go further if it fails to win favour – but it is a way around the current legal framework rather than changing the laws to lock up everyone in a certain category.

What is most needed is for those cases to be heard faster – for investigators to have the resources to gather the evidence they need, for there to be enough courts to handle the case load, for there to be enough magistrates and judges and prosecutors and defence lawyers to ensure justice happens in a timely fashion.

Otherwise we end up with what we are seeing – suspects released on bail being gunned down on the streets. Revenge killings and gang violence.

Before we talk about the prospect of keeping people locked away until their case is heard, we need to solve the problem of years-long cases in our courts.

We have said it before in this column, that old adage that justice delayed is justice denied. In the case of cases that last for many years before a verdict, too often there is no justice at all.