Absurdity in the legal system
Posted: Tuesday, April 8, 2003

by Kim Johnson

After Barry Clarke killed cashier Summer Charles for not replacing the defective $1.20 pen he'd purchased, he was taken to St Ann's. There a psychiatrist asked him, "Why you do that?"

"Well," Clarke shrugged, "Somebody has to uphold standards in this country."

The gap between Clarke's sound principles and his excessive effort to implement them is so absurdly wide it seems, with all due respect to poor Summer, risible.

At least Clarke had the excuse of lunacy. But what about those clowns who contrive to reduce our legal system to equal absurdity?

I've written about former Chief Justice Michael de la Bastide's dismissal of valid appeals on grounds that the prison authorities filed them too late.

But another case, that of 39-year-old Sheldon Roberts, carries the demented reasoning of our courts to its logical conclusion.

Roberts' alleged crime was committed in Roxborough, where a 15-year-old girl awoke in her bedroom one night and began bawling like the Queen that a man in her bedroom.

"This vicious, immoral scoundrel Son of a common mongrel Scared me through and through."

She told her grandfather, who rushed to the scene, that the intruder was Roberts.

This is Tobago so, of course, the families knew one another, and talk quickly got back to Roberts that he'd been, so to speak, fingered.

He immediately and forthwith proceeded to the station with his mother. He explained that he had indeed been in Roxborough that night but only to meet a friend and go liming. Besides, he wasn't into sex crimes.

The police didn't hold him then, but a few days later he was arrested.

On June 17, 1999 he was summarily tried in the Scarborough Magistrates' Court.

It's often difficult to get a conviction based solely on what an eyewitness saw in the dark. At night, as the law aways accepted (contrary to my experience), all cats are grey.

Still, magistrates, whose whims (in the interests of speed) are constrained by no jury, often become a law unto themselves. You could get off easy in a magistrate's court, just as you could make a jail for no reason.

Roberts was found guilty and given the maximum sentence – two years hard labour for breaking and entering (in that order), and two years for indecent assault, the sentences to run concurrently.

Like many without a lawyer, Roberts appealed the verdict. Alas, the magistrate, perhaps because Roberts had previous housebreaking convictions, didn't set bail.

The problem with appealing is that you cannot be heard until the notes of evidence are typed up and the magistrate submits his reasons.

That, by the Summary Courts Act, should be within 60 days of your notice of appeal. What a joke! Trini slowness grinds to a near halt in our soporific sister isle.

Roberts received the notes of evidence and the magistrate's reasons in July 2002. That is, three years later.

Now, bear in mind that he was sentenced to two years. In jail a year means eight months. The rest is held in case you behave bad and licks aren't enough: they can make you stay the full term.

Roberts, with remission, would have served 16 months. Because he appealed, however, he languished for 39 months behind bars — until September 2002, when he was granted bail, I think by Chief Justice Satnarine Sharma.

Here I must point out that so far Justice Sharma has shown himself to be more right-minded than any CJ we've seen in the last 30 years.

Isaac Hyatali, Clinton Bernard and de la Bastide's collective achievement was to demonstrate that cold-heartedness excludes no race.

Roberts' case is not unique. Kenneth Scott, for instance, was sentenced in May, 2000 to three years, that is, 24 months, for possessing a joint or two. (How many judges or lawyers never smoked a joint?)

Apart from being poor and black like Roberts, Scott also made the even worse mistake of appealing.

Scott spent 32 months in jail. He was let out on bail last January. His notes of evidence and the magistrate's reasons are yet to appear, though.

God alone knows when his appeal will be heard. I think he should sue government for enough money to buy a whole ganja plantation in Jamaica.

Anyway, back to Roberts, whose appeal was heard Tuesday before last, the same day cases came up whose notes of evidence had taken 10 years to materialise.

Presiding were Lionel Jones and the one who so bright he went straight into the Court of Appeal, and who rumour had it was in the running for CJ — Ralston Nelson.

In the magistrate's reasons, the girl's testimony was unsworn (and thus inadmissible). But in the notes of evidence her name had "sworn" written by it, so See-no-evil and Hear-no-evil thought that good enough.

Roberts had spent 39 months in jail waiting to appeal a 16-month sentence.

You'd think the Court of Appeal would set him free.

You'd be wrong. The two judges found that Roberts had appealed his conviction only. Not his sentence.

They hadn't the initiative to allow Roberts to change his plea.

Instead he must serve his original two-year sentence, starting on the day his appeal was dismissed. That is, two Tuesdays ago.

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