On May 27, 2005, Customs House was rocked by a $10.3M robbery. Two men armed with guns invaded the Main Street office just after closing hour, grabbed a bag of cash and fled.
On Wednesday, just two months shy of three years, the police case collapsed spectacularly in court. The police could not contact their star witness. The last time that evidence had been taken in the case had been 13 months ago. Since then, there had been a series of postponements, a truly shocking state of affairs and one that pervades many cases in the lower and high courts.
The news item on the folding of the case appeared in the same edition of Stabroek News that ironically reported on a similar problem across the sea in Trinidad. So exasperated by the loss of important cases, National Security Minister Martin Joseph was moved to say that law enforcement authorities had to stop depending on eye-witnesses to secure convictions in criminal cases.
Joseph, according to a Trinidad Express report said, that the recognition of this problem had moved the Manning administration in the direction of more scientific forms of proof including DNA testing and forensic evidence. Indeed, DNA evidence recently resulted in a historic decision in the Trinidadian courts.
Said Joseph “one of the things that is very, very clear to us is that our reliance on witnesses is something (from) which we have to completely move away from and we’re not unique in that respect”.
Even police witnesses have been absent in many cases here. During Thursday’s hearing into a gun and ammunition case against Oliver Hinckson and James Gibson the magistrate lamented the inexcusable absence of a number of police witnesses and this has been a problem for many years now.
The need for shifting the evidential basis in state prosecutions towards greater reliance on science had been raised here on numerous occasions but the criminal justice system barely plods on.
The customs case was also important as it exposed the incapacities at various levels. Footage from a Guyana Revenue Authority surveillance camera was circulated to the media showing very grainy and useless images. It later transpired that the person captured in the footage was not the one who was believed to have committed the robbery. That was the end of the footage.
In other jurisdictions, footage from adequate cameras would have been able to convict or elicit iron-clad confessions. There was a similar fiasco with cameras at Le Meridien Pegasus Hotel where the murder of a US citizen went unsolved because of the poor image that was retrieved.
There have also been myriad stories – particularly at the airport – of cameras not been turned on, no tape in them, not being monitored or aimed in a perfectly useless direction.
While a modern forensics lab is now in the works the government has moved too slowly and in the meanwhile many cases that could be won have been lost.
There are also other problems that lead one to question the seriousness and the intent behind some charges. Just over two years ago, after a high speed chase in the Demerara River that raised questions about fuel smuggling, charges of obstruction of a peace officer and bribery among others were brought against 11 persons including a prominent city businessman. The charges were all eventually dropped or withdrawn over legal technicalities.
A similar situation obtained with a number of the persons who had been held by the police in a massive sweep of the properties of businessman Roger Khan after the theft of the AK 47s.
On Friday, after more than two years of meandering, a fuel smuggling case against a businessman and others was dismissed for want of prosecution. The trial was interspersed with numerous delays for all sorts of reasons. It had appeared to be an open and shut case but for the police force and the prosecution it was not to be. The loss of this case and similar ones will raise serious questions about the efficacy of the fuel marking legislation and whether it is riddled with loopholes. Is it an effective deterrent to fuel smuggling?
When these high-profile cases are being brought do the police bring them on a sound basis and if so why are the police prosecutors and in some cases special prosecutors failing to win these cases? What signal does this send to society and what does it really say about law and order in this country?
