Polack Post: Caribbean – Kill Them All
By Peter Polack
Peter Polack
A recent French media article has implicated the Haitian equivalent of a public prosecutor in the deaths of 28 persons in a gang free part of Haiti. This could bring one of the most violent and disorganized countries in the world to the apex of counter gang warfare also known as death squads. This is not a new or recent development given the detention of the former Filipino leader Duterte by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for such crimes. against humanity.
There has been much confusion over the mass killing of alleged Caribbean gang members by the US administration when there is no need to cover these activities in the thin veneer of anti-terrorism or faux legality. If there are not going to be Nuremberg type trials at the end of the Trump Administration, then the American government needs to criminalize any international drug dealing as a capital offence, requiring no jury, to be executed immediately upon some Star Chamber like determination from intelligence, not evidence.
It is what it is.
There are some prominent voices in the Caribbean that have advocated the removal of juries for some serious offences. The United Kingdom, and her Caribbean territories, are on track to remove juries. There have been many arguments for this development, including expediting trials in an overloaded system, much of it created by prosecutorial errors, excess and exoneration by appeal.
The holier than thou crew must think that removal of juries is not summary justice and they would be right, just not yet.
Some systems of justice are well on their way to the new American paradigm of justice where entrenched police work involve suspicion or rumour and prosecution decisions, not overlooked by any inspectorate, bring cases often based on illegal acts or inadmissible intelligence without the helpful filter of a preliminary inquiry.
As to summary justice, what would be more summary than subjecting an accused innocent person to legal expense, societal shame and days of incarceration without any compensation. There is no comeback from that common scenario just like summary execution on the high seas.
So perhaps Caribbean nations have to remain silent about this onslaught when their own house and courts are not in order.
There is also the possible Trinidadian development, like Haiti, of arming prosecutors to save the court, state and police from the delay and cost of innocent until guilty, investigation, prima facie case, then court hearing. Centuries of jurisprudence would be discarded by a simple act called, return of the barbarians. The courts and other parts of civil society can then be dismantled for strongman or strongperson rule on each corner, street, village and town.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland foretold of this long ago.
Sentence first – verdict afterward.
Magna Carta be damned.
Notes
Peter Polack is a former criminal lawyer from the Cayman Islands for several decades. His books are The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War: South Africa vs. Cuba in the Angolan Civil War (2013), Jamaica, The Land of Film (2017) and Guerrilla Warfare: Kings of Revolution (2019). He was a contributor to Encyclopedia of Warfare (2013). His latest book is a compendium of Russian espionage activities with almost five hundred Soviet spies expelled from nearly 100 countries worldwide 1940-88.
His views are his own.
