Murder most unfair

HOW could a clear case of self defence reach the High Court as a murder charge? The question, of course, is one for the Department of the Director of Public Prosecutions which is charged with the responsibility of laying and prosecuting serious criminal charges on the strength of the evidence. Conversely, the DPP must also ensure that frivolous matters, those without merit or prima facie evidence, do not reach our already over-burdened courts.     

What then was the murder charge against Enrick John doing before Justice Paula Mae Weekes in the Port-of-Spain Third Criminal Court this week? The evidence was unequivocal and incontrovertible that John was threatened, attacked and had to defend himself when he fatally stabbed Johnathan Salvary at the Shipwreck Pub in Enterprise, Chaguanas, in May 2002. Salvary apparently became upset when John refused to buy him a second beer. He threatened to take John’s money. He slapped the accused who was leaving. The two men fought and Salvary was stabbed with the knife he had whipped out. We are disturbed by the fact that an open and shut case of self defence was taken to trial by the DPP’s department and actually prosecuted for two days before Justice Weekes.

We share the annoyance of the judge whose previous experience as a prosecutor must have made her more sensitive to this waste of the court’s time. Justice Weekes had no choice but to uphold the no-case submission of defence counsel Osborne Charles SC and to straighten out the DPP’s department with some trenchant criticism and timely advice. She charged the State with “going to the bitter end” in the prosecution of some matters when the evidence suggests that they do otherwise. To avoid this, Justice Weekes urged the State to give more careful study to briefs, adding: “This court is loath to think that the State is engaged in a ‘passing the buck’ exercise so that the courts will dispose of such matters.” In supporting the judge, it seems to us that a charge of  buck passing should also be made against the magistrate who presided over the preliminary inquiry into this matter. After all, a PI is held into an indictable charge such as this  to determine whether a prima facie case has been established on the evidence, before it goes to trial in the High Court.

Clearly, the magistrate should have seen that the accused, acting in self defence, had no case to answer. As far as we are concerned, however, the real tragedy lies in the fact that Enrick John has no legal recourse against the State for the two years he was kept in jail awaiting trial. Due to the failure of the State to properly discharge its responsibility in this instance, John was deprived of his freedom for quite a long time. After such a serious dislocation, he must now take up the threads of his life again, with no assistance or compensation from a delinquent State. Victims of wrongful decisions of the administration, whether by commission or omission, can appeal to the Ombudsman for redress. In John’s case, however, he has no such recourse although he was unfairly robbed of two years of his life. The injustice of this should not only resonate in the DPP’s department but also with the Attorney General who should be doing something to rectify it.