Justice Minister and Attorney-General A J Nicholson, concerned over claims that a huge 80 per cent of the 600 cases backing up in the Coroner’s Court involved controversial killings, has pledged to introduce a new Coroner’s Act within the first quarter of next year to replace the current century-old legislation.

“We recognise the deficiencies… and a lack of up-to-date rules and procedures on Coroner’s issues,” Nicholson told Friday’s sitting of the Senate, adding that once the bill had been passed, the Government would move to establish a task force in each parish to address the backlog of Coroner’s cases.

The matter was raised on a resolution proposed by Opposition Jamaica Labour Party senator, Shirley Williams, calling for the immediate establishment of “a broad-based committee comprising members of the Government, Opposition, attorneys, medical practitioners, and civil society to review the Act to make it more relevant to the needs of the society…”

Williams also observed that there were currently no existing legislation that governed principles and rules relating to “medico-legal post-mortem procedures and crime scene investigations of cases involving violent or unnatural death, sudden death, or death by unknown cause”.

This became glaringly clear, she said, when publicised accounts of questionable killings showed a lack of correct procedures at crime scenes, including absent coroners and the disturbance of the crime scene by onlookers and the security forces.

“It is critical to all of us, these investigations of alleged deaths by police … It is relevant, it touches us all and we have to speak about it … There are serious repercussions to these alleged killings that are going on, and in the absence of the proper rules and regulations to investigate the crime scene, we are having great problems … and it is important that we deal with them,” Williams stressed, adding that Jamaica was perceived as having too high a rate of police shootings.

She said Amnesty International had alleged that Jamaica was number one in the world on a per capita basis for police killings in the year 2000, when 140 deaths were recorded.

Supporting her colleague, Senator Dorothy Lightbourne renewed earlier calls for the government pathologist to be removed from the Ministry of National Security to the Ministry of Health. This, she said, would remove the conflict of interest, especially regarding controversial police killings.

Citing the famous case of the Braeton Seven, she claimed that “50 bullet holes were identified in the bodies of the seven deceased …(when) there were less than 20 spent shells in the house at Braeton. The place was left unsecured and evidence trampled on”. Lightbourne also noted that the current law “has ingredients that were not being enforced”. She argued that the state had a responsibility to pay costs for the Coroner’s Inquest, adding that most of the victims and their families were poor people.

For some time now, groups like Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ) and Families Against State Terrorism have been advocating improved investigative and other procedures in questionable killings, such as the Braeton Seven, the Crawle killings and the death of Michael Gayle, a mentally retarded youth who was kicked and beaten to death by Jamaica Defence Force soldiers and police.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is currently reviewing the Gayle case, following a petition by the JFJ.

– Dwight Bellanfante