Richard Lord

Jus­tice Min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney says the pro­vi­sion in the DNA Bill to al­low for the tak­ing of sam­ples of rape vic­tims was not in­tend­ed to in­fringe the rights of in­di­vid­u­als but to en­sure the per­pe­tra­tors "of this heinous crime are caught, in­clud­ing those who are con­sid­ered se­r­i­al rapists." Vol­ney said that while pre­sent­ing the bill for de­bate in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day. It re­quires the sup­port of a ma­jor­i­ty of three/fifths of the Sen­ate to be passed. The leg­is­la­tion was ap­proved in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last week.

He said an­oth­er sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fit ex­pect­ed to re­sult from the mea­sure was the pos­si­bil­i­ty that "in­creased guilty pleas by de­fen­dants may re­sult in vic­tims re­port­ing rapes to the po­lice more of­ten."

Vol­ney said the ad­di­tion­al trau­ma rape vic­tims suf­fer cur­rent­ly is hav­ing to tes­ti­fy in court. Vol­ney said with the new leg­is­la­tion "the in­creased prob­a­bil­i­ty of de­fen­dants en­ter­ing guilty pleas when con­front­ed with pos­i­tive DNA re­sults may en­cour­age vic­tims to re­port more crimes in the fu­ture." He said this would al­so save the court both time and mon­ey. Vol­ney said the fun­da­men­tal rights of in­di­vid­u­als must be bal­anced with the rights of the col­lec­tive pub­lic in­ter­est. He said the DNA Bill was "rea­son­ably jus­ti­fi­able" as it seeks to mod­ernise the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem in T&T. Vol­ney said the mea­sure was "an in­valu­able crime-fight­ing tool aimed at se­cur­ing con­vic­tion on one hand and ex­on­er­at­ing the in­no­cent on the oth­er."

He stressed that the cur­rent lev­el of crime and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in T&T was un­ac­cept­able not with­stand­ing the best ef­forts of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy and the Pro­tec­tive Ser­vices. "The crim­i­nal el­e­ment has vir­tu­al­ly dec­i­mat­ed the ef­fec­tive func­tion­ing of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem," Vol­ney added. Vol­ney said the pro­vi­sions of the bill would al­low for a more suc­cess­ful crime de­tec­tion in T&T. He said the bill would "em­pow­er the po­lice and the law en­force­ment to be able to de­tect the crim­i­nals who com­mit the of­fences and to bring them to see the face of jus­tice in our land."