MANDEVILLE,  Manchester — After serving Manchester since 1998, Resident Magistrate Oswald Burchenson embarked on his retirement at the end of 2014 .

An appreciation and farewell ceremony at the Golf View Hotel gave community leaders, members of the legal fraternity and other well-wishers a chance to show their gratitude for Burchenson’s legacy, which they deemed “unmatched”.

Justice Marva McDonald Bishop said Burchenson helped her to understand that when making judgements on people’s lives, the solution cannot only be imprisonment and fines.

“To me I was then a purist, a pure legal mind. It was either the law or nothing. He was the only judge to the best of my knowledge, and I can say so without fear of contradiction, who strived continually to fuse the dispensation of justice with community service and the upliftment of his people. It is Mr Burchenson through his belief in the power of restorative justice methods who showed me that there are other methods to adjudication,” she said.

McDonald Bishop said Burchenson was a staunch proponent of the Community Service Order sentencing regime introduced by Parliament in 1978 under the Criminal Justice Reform Act. She said as they worked together he sometimes used methods she found “unorthodox” at the time, such as sending people to church as the penalty for some offences.

Burchenson’s approach was one that president of the Manchester Bar Association Norman Godfrey described as “admirably unique”.

He said that in carrying out his duties as a magistrate, Burchenson had a belief that even after full litigation, the successful party was sometimes still left dissatisfied, and that if people learnt to resolve disputes among themselves it would redound to a more harmonious community.

Godfrey said that in Burchenson’s way of dealing with litigants they never left the courtroom feeling belittled even if the ruling was not in their favour.

“It is my considered view that no one person is able to do justice to the legacy of His Honour, Mr B,” Godfrey said.

Burchenson started his professional life as a classroom teacher and joined the Jamaica Constabulary Force before pursuing studies as an attorney. He eventually rose to the post of resident magistrate.

His social engineering efforts were said to also be evident outside of the court room. A citation credited him for being instrumental in securing 40 acres of land for a proposed modern justice centre to be constructed in the south/central region; spearheadeading the formation of a community counselling and restorative justice centre in Manchester; serving as vice-chairman at the Police Co-operative Credit Union; and ensuring a well-established victim support programme.

Burchenson was also involved in many other voluntary and community development roles, the citation said.

Burchenson told those who came out to support him that a resident magistrate should see his position as one of leadership in the community. A leader, he argued, should be a dealer in hope.

“You must offer the people whom you have to deal with some form of hope out of the desperate situations they might find themselves in at any time. Nobody is better than anybody. It’s just for the grace of God that I (was) adjudicating and they (the people I adjudicated over were) on the other side,” he said.