Senator: Police no-show for cases

During the debate on Thursday on the Criminal Procedure (Plea Discussion and Plea Agreement) Bill 2017, Heath, who is also an attorney, said one of the problems attorneys find is the accused who have had multiple matters dismissed because the police did not turn up to court.

“These persons are not likely to engage into any plea agreement when they know the culture of police officers is that, ‘I’m going to run my case for a little while, see if the officer coming and when he don’t turn up I’m going to hire an attorney and get it thrown out’. That’s another way which we avoid a trial but notwithstanding that throwing out process takes years. So it’s still a clog in the system, so that behaviour has to be discouraged and until such time that police officers are made to account when they do not come to court and their matters are thrown out and they don’t face disciplinary actions then it’s going to keep on happening,” he said.

He said with this bill there has to be a change in how the police prosecute their matters which they have brought to court. “Because if that doesn’t happen you’re going to find the end user meaning the accused who knows the system is not going to be attracted to this at all (plea bargaining) so that is something that I think simply has to be addressed.” Heath said he also found the bill to be lacking in terms of how it addresses specific sentences.

“It doesn’t speak to for instance a suspended sentence if you were to give by way of plea discussion/plea agreement a suspended sentence.

That person who knows that he has a suspended sentence hanging over his head is more likely than not for a period to engage in behaviour so as not to attract or make that suspended sentence come to fruition and I’m saying that is how we need to start looking at it,” he said.

Heath said with this bill a suspect can benefit from a plea agreement but this he says is hardly to succeed if they do not commensurate with this law a substantial improvement in the evidence gathering.

“A police can have the name of the suspect, matching description, the last thing that will happen is that there has to be an identification parade and it is only after then you can charge, and sometimes that takes a little while to get that going.

So I have no difficulty at that stage but it must be that the evidence has to be disclosed to the suspect and his attorney at that stage. If your case has good evidence there is no need to hold it back, so I’m seeing in this proposed bill that you can disclose a summary, I think you should disclose as much as you think to bring the bargain to the table.”