We have no difficulty understanding the frustration that human rights watchers, Dr Carolyn Gomes and Ms Yvonne McCalla Sobers are feeling right now.

Last Thursday, Ms Paula Llewellyn, the director of public prosecutions (DPP), ruled against prosecuting the soldiers implicated in the shooting death of one of five men in Tivoli Gardens two years ago.

After all, no right-thinking person likes to see henious crimes go unpunished.

However, we have to part ways with Ms Gomes, the executive director of the Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ) and Ms McCalla Sobers, head of the Families Against State Terrorism (FAST), to the extent that they have implied that Ms Llewellyn is obliged to prosecute in order to ‘send a message’ to potential murderers.

Contrary to Ms McCalla’s complaint in Saturday’s edition that Ms Llewellyn’s decision will “enable people to think that they can do what they feel like without impunity”, we would like to believe that Ms Llewellyn’s decision is demonstrative of the courage to let the justice system work according to the rules by which it is governed, as opposed to the need to satisfy anyone’s appetite for retribution, however justified.

According to Saturday’s edition, Ms Llewellyn’s decision was based on her review of the depositions and statements in the matter which was considered by a panel of jurors in the Coroner’s court.

Specifically, Ms Llewellyn’s position, as we understand it, is that the Crown would not be able to challenge a claim of self-defence on the part of the accused, whose case is that they went to West Kingston in search of wanted men and were fired upon before returning the fire, killing all five men.

Given that the onus would be on the Crown to prove self-defence beyond a reasonable doubt to the satisfaction of the jury, it would be an ultimate waste of judicial time and resources to press ahead, only to be overturned, in the event of a successful prosecution, on appeal.

We are sure that it is not beyond Dr Gomes and Ms McCalla Sobers to understand that the lenses though which Ms Llewellyn is obliged to view matters prior to exercising her discretion cannot be tinted with the type of emotion to which they are entitled.

For when it comes right down to it, convictions must be premised on evidence which can stand the scutiny of the rules on which the justice system is premised, whether they, we or anyone, like it or not.

Once we begin to subscribe to the view that prosecutions must be pressed for reasons other than the existence of cogent and credible evidence to see them through, we are heading for trouble.

For the presumption of innocence is supposed to apply to everyone and there is a world of difference between proving and deeming guilt.

So we would encourage Dr Gomes and Ms McCalla Sobers to take Ms Llewellyn’s decision and explanation of it, at face value and deal with their disappointment in less accusatory terms. Unless, of course, they are in possession of some other information which could justify their comments.

It’s foolhardy to hug up the justice system when it rules in one’s favour and reject it when it does not.

You can’t eat your cake and have it too, ladies.