Op­po­si­tion MP Mar­vin Gon­za­les says re­form­ing the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and not the pro­posed stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion will im­pact the crime sit­u­a­tion.

Speak­ing at the sec­ond round of con­sul­ta­tions by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment in Ch­agua­nas on Thurs­day night on the planned leg­is­la­tion, Gon­za­les at­trib­uted the in­ef­fi­cien­cies in the DPP’s of­fice as a cause of crime.

Re­fer­ring to re­cent de­lays in court cas­es, Gon­za­les said, “Look at what is hap­pen­ing with the DPP’s de­part­ment not fil­ing in­dict­ments on time, and af­ter ten years some mem­bers of the pub­lic fac­ing se­ri­ous crim­i­nal charges have to walk away free.”

He added, “How is stand-your-ground deal­ing with these crim­i­nal jus­tice is­sues? How is it go­ing to deal with cor­rup­tion in the prison sys­tem? How is it go­ing to deal with cor­rup­tion in the po­lice ser­vice?”

Gon­za­les said the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion can­not solve crime.

“No piece of leg­is­la­tion is go­ing to erad­i­cate crime and vi­o­lence in Trinidad and To­ba­go on its own. To deal with the is­sue of crime and vi­o­lence, you need to buck­le down and do very dif­fi­cult work in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, the re­form of our bail sys­tem, the re­form of the DPP’s of­fice, po­lice re­form, and so­cial jus­tice re­form. These are the things that will deal with the root cause of crime.”

He ques­tioned the Gov­ern­ment’s pre­sen­ta­tion of the leg­is­la­tion, say­ing it was mis­lead­ing the pop­u­la­tion.

“The Gov­ern­ment gives the im­pres­sion that if this leg­is­la­tion is some­how en­act­ed, it will be a sil­ver bul­let to our crime prob­lem. Any­thing else be­ing of­fered as a so­lu­tion is an at­tempt to fool the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

Mean­while, Se­nior Coun­sel Lar­ry Lal­la ex­plained the ex­ist­ing pro­tec­tions un­der com­mon law.

“At com­mon law, there is no du­ty of re­treat be­fore us­ing force as long as the force used was rea­son­ably jus­ti­fied in the cir­cum­stances as you be­lieved them to be. Whether you could have re­treat­ed safe­ly or not is one of the fac­tors the court will take in­to ac­count in de­cid­ing whether your force was rea­son­able,” he said.

He com­pared the com­mon law po­si­tion with the Gov­ern­ment’s draft Home In­va­sion, Self-De­fence and De­fence of Prop­er­ty Bill 2025.

“Un­der the com­mon law, a per­son at­tacked in his home was al­lowed to use such force as is pro­por­tion­ate and rea­son­able in the cir­cum­stances as he be­lieved them to be. The new bill must be com­pared care­ful­ly with this frame­work be­fore any de­ci­sion is made,” Lal­la said.

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Janelle John-Bates re­mind­ed par­tic­i­pants that the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion does not guar­an­tee im­mu­ni­ty.