A retired judge of the Appeal Court has condemned the offer of reduced sentences to accused awaiting trial in the courts as “a diabolical, misguided concept, which smacks of the distasteful commercialisation… of the justice system”.

Clearly incensed, Justice Clarence W Walker declared in a letter to the editor: “I wholeheartedly disagree with this concept of ‘discount days’…It should be scrapped forthwith.”

Sentence-Reduction Days, as the Justice Ministry is calling it, is among several measures being implemented by the courts to encourage more accused people to plead guilty, thereby helping to clear the backlog of cases clogging up the criminal courts.

Accused individuals who plead guilty on sentence-reduction days are eligible for a discount of up to 50 per cent in the time they would have spent behind bars.

Among the people who have benefited from huge sentencing discounts are Phillip Brown, the construction worker who admitted he beat his pregnant ex-girlfriend to death, and Omar Graham, who pleaded “guilty” to carrying out a bloody rampage at Moncrieffe’s Patio Shop last March.

Justice Walker was especially livid that Brown’s sentence was reduced so significantly: Following is the full text of Justice Walker’s letter titled ‘Injustice for sale?’:

“What is this that I have lived to see happen? Have we in Jamaica got to the stage where a man can intentionally bludgeon his pregnant babymother (albeit pregnant by another man) to death using a hammer immediately after having had sexual intercourse with her; then afterwards wrap her dead body in a tarpaulin and attempt to dispose of her corpse by throwing it into a gully, in the course of which he is caught ‘in flagrante delicto’ [in the very act].

Then having been properly charged for the crime of murder, he patiently waits for the advent of a ‘discount day’ on which he pleads guilty to a lesser crime of manslaughter on the basis of legal provocation. What legal provocation?

And, in exchange for ‘payment’ of that plea he receives a benign sentence of 15 years’ imprisonment at hard labour, with a possibility of parole after being imprisoned for a period of 10 years. All of this in a country which is supposed to be governed by the rule of law.

“I wholeheartedly disagree with this concept of ‘discounted days’. In my opinion, it is a diabolical, misguided concept which smacks of the distasteful commercialisation of our hallowed, sacrosanct justice system. It should be scrapped forthwith. Whose idea was it in the first place? “Heaven help us now!”

The sentence-reduction days initiative has, however, received support from several defence attorneys.