AT least one sitting Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) parish councillor was convicted and fined for fraud 15 years ago and still has two cases outstanding against him, including one from 1982 for the illegal possession of a firearm.

In the same parish, a JLP councillor/caretaker has two criminal convictions, although in this case an 18-month sentence in 1983 for house-breaking has since been expunged from his records. This councillor/caretaker still has an outstanding charge for shop-breaking, from 1983, against him.

Both men were selected to contest last year’s local government elections despite statements from the party that background checks would eliminate people with checkered histories.

But it now seems likely that the emergence of these convictions, for which the Sunday Observer has file numbers, will drive reforms in how the JLP and the ruling People’s National Party (PNP) vet election candidates in the future.

On Thursday, JLP General-Secretary Karl Samuda could not confirm or deny whether persons with criminal records had in fact contested the election on behalf of the party.

But Samuda recalled that at the time of the parish council elections, JLP leader Edward Seaga had more than once asked gathered candidates to come clean about criminal records, if any existed.

“Mr Seaga told all the prospective candidates not to do anything to embarrass the party,” Samuda said.

It was, however, virtually impossible for the party to ask everyone for a fingerprint to have their records checked, Samuda said.

PNP chairman Robert Pickersgill said that his party’s top brass made it clear to the prospective candidates before the last election that there would be “hell to pay” if any of them had a criminal record and did not disclose it – a point consistently hammered home by the party’s president, Prime Minister P J Patterson.

“The question of integrity in the party is not something we take lightly and where doubts were expressed in both national and local elections, individuals would be disallowed,” Pickersgill said.

“To my certain knowledge, well in advance of calling the last municipal elections, sufficient time was dedicated to the selection of our candidates to make sure that those finally chosen were persons of integrity,” he added.

It however appears that neither party has a structured, ongoing system for delving into the backgrounds of candidates, including their possible criminal records.

In the case of the JLP councillor and counicillor/caretaker, information about their convictions was corroborated by the Criminal Records Office as well as three intelligence agencies.

With regard to the councillor, an early brush with the law, according to police and court records, was in August 1982 when he was arrested for the illegal possession of a firearm. The case is listed as outstanding.

Six weeks ago, as the councillor arrived at a New Kingston hotel for a meeting, he was identified by a now-retired police officer who helped to investigate the 1982 case when the politician was 24.

“That’s the same person,” said the ex-cop. “He is a bit heavier now.”

Five years later, in March 1988, the future politician was accused of breaking a store and committing larceny in a Jamaican town towards the east of the island. That case was heard in the Port Antonio Court. It was adjourned sine die – without a date being set for its continuation.

In the third instance, in September 1989, the councillor was convicted under an assumed name for fraudulent conversion. According to files at the Criminal Records Office, he was fined $300 or 10 days.

Although the name is changed in this incident, the case appears in the same police files as the earlier ones.

In the case of the councillor/caretaker, who reliable sources say was also deported from the United States, he was arrested on October 28, 1987 on a charge of attempted shop-breaking of Leonard Moses Limited, 101 Harbour Street, Kingston. He was convicted and fined $100 or seven days.

He was also convicted and sentenced to 18 months in May 1983 in a case of shop-breaking, but benefited from a record expungement.

Another case of shop-breaking against the councillor/caretaker appears in police records as outstanding.

This is not the only politician who benefited from his record being expunged from the criminal records. Marjorie Taylor, a PNP councillor in the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation (KSAC) in the early 1990s, was convicted of smuggling ganja to someone in lock-up at the Central Police Station in Kingston.

Taylor was convicted and fined, but was subsequently named ambassador for children by the Patterson Administration and sent around the world to represent Jamaica on children’s welfare issues.

Neither of the two JLP politicians has been available for comment. Their phones rang without answer and they did not return calls.

However, in one case a key JLP activist to whom one of the politicians is close, vehemently rejected that he had a conviction.

Attorney Paul Ashley, who has a PhD in jurisprudence, has questioned the long time that the unprosecuted cases have remained on the books, and expressed scepticism at the term ‘outstanding’ used to describe the status.

“Outstanding is not a concept before the courts,” he said. “Twenty-two years is a very long time for any matter to be before the courts. My feeling is that it has been dismissed for want of prosecution, or a No Order was filed, or it has been adjourned sine die.”

If a case has been adjourned sine die, the matter remains on the books, but the onus is on the accused to have it discontinued, Ashley explained.

Ashley stressed, too, that expungement was not automatic, saying that “an application must be made for the removal of a criminal conviction”.

The attorney-at-law explained that a person could not be considered as having a criminal record if a conviction was dismissed on appeal, and if the record was expunged.

However, investigations by the Sunday Observer showed that there was no record of an appeal of the convictions.

Bruce Golding, the JLP chairman and the front-runner for the party’s leadership when Seaga steps down in November, has long campaigned on the need to clean up Jamaican politics.

But Golding, at a meeting with Observer editors and reporters six weeks ago, could not speak to the extent of background checks done by the party leading up to the last national and municipal elections.

He had just returned to the party at the time of the 2002 general election, after a seven-year hiatus, and was elected chairman last November, five months after the local government elections.

He admitted that he had “heard” of a case of deportation, involving a present caretaker/councillor, for immigration violations.

“My information is that due diligence was done, because there were one or two cases that were cited to me,” Golding told the Sunday Observer. “In one case, for example, somebody was deported from the United States, and the due diligence that was done led them to confirmation that the deportation was because of an immigration violation and not because of any illegal activity.”

Golding said he could not speak “personally or authoritatively about the nature of the due diligence or the extent of it”.

JLP sources, however, expressed concerns that “very little, if any, due diligence work was done, except to ask them (candidates)” if they had criminal records.