Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Gov­ern­ment is un­der­scor­ing that the pro­tec­tion which will be of­fered to the pub­lic in its pro­posed stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion does not al­ready ex­ist in this coun­try’s laws.

Fol­low­ing the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s call for Gov­ern­ment to move care­ful­ly with its plan, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has dou­bled down on mak­ing the law a re­al­i­ty, as promised in the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ man­i­festo.

How­ev­er, dur­ing yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Red House, Guardian Me­dia brought to the PM’s at­ten­tion an ar­ti­cle writ­ten in a dai­ly news­pa­per in 2023 by at­tor­ney Jagdeo Singh, who is now her House Speak­er.

Singh wrote then, “In my re­spect­ful view, the com­mon law in re­la­tion to self-de­fence has at its heart the un­der­ly­ing fun­da­men­tal no­tions of the stand-your-ground prin­ci­ple. Whilst la­belling this dis­crete prin­ci­ple of the com­mon law with a sen­sa­tion­al ban­ner is some­what at­trac­tive, it must not be for­got­ten that the com­mon law of self-de­fence al­ready of­fers the same de­gree of pro­tec­tion to per­sons and home­own­ers than a sep­a­rate stand-your-ground leg­isla­tive pro­vi­sion would pro­vide. In short, there is no need for new leg­is­la­tion.”

In re­sponse to the ar­ti­cle, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “In my re­spect­ful view that is a wrong in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the law. One of the things that com­mon law has which will be strength­ened by what it says is you re­treat first. We are say­ing no! A man is in your house, your wife is threat­ened, your child is threat­ened, no! You do what you have to do to de­fend your fam­i­ly. That will be a ma­jor change from the com­mon law doc­trine.”

How­ev­er, it was al­so point­ed out that the ar­ti­cle from Singh went on to say, “It seems to be that there is col­lec­tive so­ci­etal mis­con­cep­tion that a per­son un­der a threat, re­al or per­ceived, is un­der a du­ty to re­treat. That is sim­ply not so. The du­ty to re­treat was part of the old com­mon law. That rule has dis­ap­peared. The cur­rent com­mon law im­pos­es no such du­ty on a per­son.”

Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein backed up the PM and ex­plained, “What we are do­ing as a Gov­ern­ment is putting cer­tain­ty with re­spect to the law of self-de­fence which is what we are call­ing stand your ground law.”

Ho­sein said Singh was say­ing that, “the cur­rent sta­tus of the law is that there is use of pro­por­tion­al­i­ty and as the Prime Min­is­ter said, re­treat. We are say­ing we are putting the law in­to the box of four cor­ners so that if some­body in­vades your home, you don’t have to in­ter­pret while they have a gun to your head, what is pro­por­tion­al?”

He added, “What we are say­ing is that you could use the force to desta­bilise that per­son to pro­tect your­self, your prop­er­ty and your fam­i­ly.”

In her ini­tial com­ments on the mat­ter, the PM not­ed some pub­lic con­cern about the pro­posed law. How­ev­er, she said while the on­go­ing de­bate is healthy, it will pro­vide a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of what Gov­ern­ment is at­tempt­ing to achieve.

“Ask your­self this, why should you have to re­treat in your own home? That’s the old law, that you should re­treat. Why should you have to re­treat in your own home when you and your fam­i­ly are be­ing threat­ened?”

Why should you have to de­cide be­tween de­fend­ing your fam­i­ly or not de­fend­ing your fam­i­ly be­cause you are fear­ful that you will be pros­e­cut­ed lat­er?” the Prime Min­is­ter asked.

With re­spect to con­ver­sa­tions around in­jur­ing the at­tack­er and not fa­tal­ly wound­ing them, the Prime Min­is­ter said that may not be prac­ti­cal in a home in­va­sion sit­u­a­tion.

“There are friv­o­lous ar­gu­ments about aim­ing for the crim­i­nal’s foot and hand and leg and what­ev­er it may be. That is un­re­al­is­tic in-home in­va­sion sit­u­a­tions be­cause you are al­ready so ter­ri­fied that you would be such a marks­man that you could aim for the two, so we will bring the stand-your -ground laws to de­fend your­self and your fam­i­lies,” she ar­gued.

The Prime Min­is­ter de­clared, “Do not hes­i­tate, send them straight to the hos­pi­tal.”

The Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty has es­tab­lished a com­mit­tee to in­form the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, who is in charge of draft­ing it, pre­vi­ous­ly said he hopes to have the rel­e­vant ma­te­r­i­al at the end of this month. He said he hoped to have the leg­is­la­tion in Par­lia­ment be­fore it goes to re­cess.