THERE is an event at the ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys’ and Girls’ Athletics Championships in Jamaica called the medley relay. It’s quite exciting.

It starts with a 400-metre leg, which is followed by two 200-metre legs. It’s really exciting stuff; thrilling, actually. That is until the race is passed to the last-leg runners for an 800-metre stretch.

At this point, the whole thing slows down in pace. The five-metre lead that the first three runners worked for becomes significantly less impactful if they don’t have at least an 800-metre runner who is of equal talent to the field. It’s somewhat anticlimactic, to say the least.

Investigating a crime was, and is a combination of process-driven functions, hard work, and use of knowledge. The longer you do it, the better you get at it. In recent years, it has become far more driven by science.

Prosecuting a crime is a legal quagmire wherein highly-trained professionals, who get more effective as they age, have to navigate laws that ensure justice, even if they defy common sense. The entire process is moderated by a learned judge who determines what is admissible, legal, and relevant.

After all of the above — the seasoned sleuth, the highly trained lawyers, the scientists, the judge of many decades — the decision comes down to a carpenter, a hairdresser, an accountant, a vendor, a farmer, a musician, and a peddler who sells figurines.

These are all great professions, trades, and vocations, but are they all suited for analysing forensic evidence? Why does this seem ridiculous to only me?

So everything that happens before is of little or no impact. It’s just like the 800-metre runner who finishes the medley; if he is good, it works. What happens leading up to that point doesn’t really matter. Do you see the similarity?

Then there is capability. For example, you, of course, know of DNA identification. It is unique to each human being. This uniqueness can be explained as follows:

“DNA is unique to each individual, except identical twins, due to the specific, trillion-fold combination of three billion base pairs (A, T, C, G) inherited from parents and rearranged through recombination. While 99.5 per cent of human DNA is identical, a 0.5 per cent variation creates unique genetic codes that define individual traits, metabolic functions, and characteristics. These act as a one-of-a-kind blueprint.”

That’s Google’s explanation of DNA. It probably makes little or no sense to you. It makes little or no sense to me. The fact is that the more judges are exposed to this science, the more they can appreciate its correctness. Yet, we don’t choose them to determine guilt or innocence. Rather, we choose the accountant whose expertise lies in tax-compliance or the guy who sells figurines.

Blood spatter is actually my area of expertise. The patterns created by blood that is put into flight can assist in determining the origin of the impact that caused the flight. A mathematical formula is involved in this determination. It is as follows: Formula: (alpha =arcsin left(frac{W}{L}right)).

I have been involved in blood spatter analysis for a quarter century and still have issues with the formula and the explanation of its correctness. Imagine the guy who is seeing it for the first time.

I can go on and on, but I shouldn’t have to convince you that a regular guy or girl shouldn’t have to decide whether my spatter analysis is dead accurate or junk science.

The security levels associated with trials or witnesses are extreme. You can see the set-up for the Klansman gang trial. Our witness protection programme can boast that it has never lost a witness as the professionalism and effort to maintain that record is significant. However, the decider of the facts — the jury — often uses public transportation to get to the courthouse.

Change shouldn’t be this hard to achieve, but it is. A jury of your peers is guaranteed for your justice by our system. But are they really your peers?

The Vybz Kartel trial should have been the death-knell of the jury system. However, 12 years after that abomination of corruption, the jury system remains as our decider of the most important facts possible. The inability or ability to change what is failing is what determines the future of a country. The irony is that we have parish judges serving as deciders of the facts in the parish court. We have high court judges deciding guilt or innocence in the Gun Court, with the ability to sentence people to decades in prison. Why then is there this obsession to keep juries in the Supreme Court?

The hard truth is that it’s not working and we just don’t like change.

The correct process of determining guilt or innocence has to be what matters. Tradition, principles, constitutional rights can’t stop a shank in a cell.

What needs to be most important is that good men, innocent men, don’t go to jail. Less, but still very important, is that guilty people don’t go free.

The jury system cannot provide the best-possible method for determining guilt or innocence. That is a fact. Any intention to maintain that is because of history and an antiquated constitution that has been altered and needs further alterations.

What works now, what works best, and what saves lives is what matters.

Decisions in the high court that impact lives need to be made by the most competent, and the most competent are judges.

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