Dear Editor,

In its efforts to curb runaway crime destroying the country, the Jamaican Government would be well advised to ignore the warnings from Chief Justice Bryan Sykes and Court of Appeal President Dennis Brooks about mandatory minimum sentences.

The chief justice makes a persuasive prima facie case for what former US President George W Bush called “fuzzy math”.

The chief justice is absolutely correct that mandatory minimum sentence are likely to result in fewer guilty pleas, thus increasing the backlog. This is in the plus column. He appears to ignore the minus column, as the harsher penalties are expected to deter the youth from committing the gun crimes in the first place, thus reducing the number that enter the system. Unless, of course, the chief justice is ignoring the deterrent aspect of sentencing, which, with the greatest of respect, would constitute even “fuzzzier” law.

The backlog and the ‘logjam’ would be even further reduced should the Government heed the chief justice’s excellent recommendation regarding more bench trials as opposed to the totally dysfunctional jury system based on this fallacious notion of being tried by one’s peers —a system long since abandoned by countries such as India and South Africa.

As for the warning about mandatory minimum sentences being ruled unconstitutional in some cases by the Court of Appeal, prosecutors have wide discretion regarding the cases they bring before the court. Should a prosecutor decide to bring a 21-year-old youth, with no previous convictions, before the court for possessing a single bullet and expose that youth to 15 years in prison, such prosecutoral abomination ought to be rightly ‘rewarded’ with a ruling of being excessive and therefore unconstitutional.

Errol W A Townshend

Ontario, Canada

ewat@rogers.com