Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Bail Bill will be back in Par­lia­ment on Mon­day—and it seeks to im­pose con­di­tions on the ex­er­cise of the court’s dis­cre­tion in grant­i­ng bail to peo­ple charged with mur­der, cer­tain se­ri­ous of­fences and firearm-re­lat­ed of­fences.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour is call­ing on the Op­po­si­tion to sup­port it this time.

“The Bail (Amend­ment) 2024 Bill re­quires a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty vote for pas­sage. I look for­ward to the UNC be­ing a re­spon­si­ble op­po­si­tion and vot­ing for it in the na­tion­al in­ter­est,” Ar­mour said last evening.

He spoke to Guardian Me­dia af­ter lay­ing three pieces of pro­posed leg­is­la­tion in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day. These will be de­bat­ed next week.
They are the Bail (Amend­ment) Bill (2024), the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Ju­di­cial & Le­gal Ser­vice) Bill 2024 and the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings Amend­ment 2) 2024 Bill.

The Bail Bill was de­feat­ed when it was brought to the Sen­ate in Au­gust 2022. It was passed in 2019 with a “sun­set” clause that per­mit­ted it for three years. Gov­ern­ment had sought to ex­tend it a fur­ther year. The bill pre­scribed cir­cum­stances in which bail could be de­nied to those charged with se­ri­ous of­fences, in­clud­ing firearms, drugs, gang ac­tiv­i­ty, traf­fick­ing in per­sons and sex­u­al-re­lat­ed of­fences mat­ters. It had re­quired a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty vote for pas­sage but failed to get In­de­pen­dent and Op­po­si­tion sup­port.

Ar­mour sig­nalled he would have re­viewed the bill with a view to bring­ing it back and would have held wider con­sul­ta­tions with In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors par­tic­u­lar­ly.

The Bail (Amend­ment) Bill, 2024 to be de­bat­ed on Mon­day seeks to amend the Bail Act, Chap­ter 4:60 to make pro­vi­sion for the re­stric­tion of bail to per­sons charged with se­ri­ous of­fences.

The bill seeks to give ef­fect to the rul­ing of the Privy Coun­cil in the case of Ak­ili Charles v State [2022] by pro­vid­ing that a judge or mas­ter may grant bail to a per­son charged with the of­fence of mur­der. The bill al­so seeks to im­pose con­di­tions on the ex­er­cise of the court’s dis­cre­tion in grant­i­ng bail to per­sons charged with the of­fence of mur­der, se­ri­ous of­fences and firearm-re­lat­ed of­fences.

Fur­ther, the bill seeks to im­pose “an en­hanced re­ver­sal of bur­den” on peo­ple charged with mur­der and firearm-re­lat­ed of­fences to re­quire such peo­ple to show ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances to jus­ti­fy grant­i­ng of bail.

The bill al­so seeks to re­quire a re­view of the Bail Act to be con­duct­ed every five years af­ter its com­mence­ment. It fur­ther seeks to pro­vide that bail grant­ed to an ac­cused un­der sec­tion 5 of the act will con­tin­ue to ap­ply af­ter the bill comes in­to op­er­a­tion.

The bill re­quires a spe­cial three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty vote for pas­sage—26 votes to­tal. This re­quires four Op­po­si­tion votes in ad­di­tion to the Gov­ern­ment’s 22.

The oth­er two bills which can be passed by a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty will be done next Wednes­day.