Challenges and Observations on the Judicial System in Barbados

Despite its shortcomings, I have a very healthy respect for the judicial system in Barbados but there are some things about it which I find difficult to understand, far less accept.

I do not know if it is fear of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Caribbean Court of Justice, Amnesty International, or some other international agency, but our law courts seem (at least to me) to be guided by some strange parameters.

I am aware that Barbados has signed on to many treaties and conventions but I sometimes wonder if when we sign these treaties/conventions we take into consideration the customs, mores and desires of the people of Barbados or whether we sign them just to belong to ‘the club’?

Our law courts are fettered by the dictates from many of these organisations to such an extent that it seems that they appear to extend more sympathy and consideration to the perpetrators of crime than to the victims.

The death penalty was one of the first casualties of this trend and is now at death’s door with no hope of life support.

Pleading guilty earns an accused a thirty-three and a third discount of the proposed sentence. I have heard that this is because an early guilty plea enables the courts to save time and money. I know that it is often said that criminals are stupid otherwise they would not commit crime, but consider an accused facing 12 years at Dodds who knows that a guilty

plea would reduce his sentence to eight years he would really have to be stupid if he did not realise that saving the law

courts a two week trial could earn him freedom four years earlier.

In addition, if he says that he is sorry and shows some remorse another chunk is deducted from his sentence.

Consideration is then given to the delay in bringing the accused to trial and that takes another bite out of the sentence.

And to crown it off, there is another reduction for mitigating factors.

When all these deductions are taken into consideration sometimes the accused is sentenced to ‘time served’. Can the victim really believe that he has received justice?

Rollins Howard