OPPOSITION Leader Mark Golding says he does not foresee his side objecting to the new firearms Bill, but has flagged some provisions and sought assurance from Government that the guard rails in the Criminal Justice (Administration) Act (2015) will remain in place.

These guard rails Golding references give trial courts the ability to refer matters for appeal where they feel the prescribed minimum penalty is excessive.

“For the Opposition not to support this legislation, it would have to cross a very serious bar of being objectionable,” Golding told the House on Wednesday during debate on the Firearms (Prohibition, Restriction and Regulation) Act, 2022. “While I have major concerns as to how this will work in practice and its impact on the court system from the point of view of the fundamental justice issues in it, and the constitutionality of the usurpation of the proper province of the judiciary in sentencing, the fact that there is a safety valve in the 2015 Act, which amended the Criminal Justice Administration Act, is significant and causes me not to be inclined to vote against this legislation.”

National Security Minister Dr Horace Chang opened the debate on the amended Bill on Tuesday following months of deliberations by a parliamentary joint select committee, which heard submissions from critical State agencies and private interests.The Opposition leader, however, said he had great concern regarding that “safety valve” which is provided in part 1B of that Act, and whether it will apply in gun cases where the minimum sentence is life imprisonment. The jurisdiction, which this clause in the Criminal Justice Administration Act creates, only arises if the offence is punishable by a prescribed minimum penalty. Golding pointed to other crimes under other pieces of legislation such as the Offences Against the Person Act, and the Sexual Offences Act, which attract penalties of life imprisonment, or such other term which the court thinks appropriate, but which also carry mandatory prescribed minimum sentences of no less than 15 years.

“The idea of a minimum penalty suggests to me that there is a range that the law allows, but the law imposes a bottom to that range,” he said.The Opposition leader said the penalty under section five of the firearms Bill, however, imposes a fixed penalty that has no lower ceiling, begging the question of whether such a penalty falls within the sentencing guard rail.

“If that were not so, it would mean that the safety valve on which I am relying in saying that I would not vote against this particular legislation would not achieve the objective of being a safety valve in the cases where mandatory life is the sentence prescribed by this legislation,” he stated.

Section five of the firearms Bill says a person in possession of an illegal weapon “shall on conviction before a Circuit Court be sentenced to imprisonment for life and, notwithstanding the provisions of the Parole Act concerning the time within which an offender shall be eligible for parole, upon sentencing a person convicted for a felony under this subsection the court shall specify a term of imprisonment of not less than 15 years, that the person shall serve before being eligible for parole”.

Golding argued also that the removal of the discount for guilty plea statutory regime for firearm offences, along with the mandatory life sentence for offences which didn’t previously attract such sentences, will result in a substantial increase in the case load of the criminal courts, which are already under great pressure.

“Going forward, well over 50 per cent of the cases in the Gun Court are going to be cases where there are mandatory life sentences applied. That’s a new paradigm for the courts to address. It remains to be seen, when it is tested, how the constitutional court will react to it and what effect it’s going to have on the case flow in the criminal justice system, and what effect it will have on the adjudicating judge’s attitude towards assessing evidence and passing a sentence of guilty in the Gun Court, which is trial by judge alone,” he outlined.