I have writ­ten at least twice be­fore in this same col­umn that, ac­cord­ing to our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man had to have been mur­dered by no one two decades ago. Al­so, two decades ago, nine men ap­par­ent­ly did noth­ing wrong but still were “ma­li­cious­ly pros­e­cut­ed” and were award­ed $20 mil­lion from tax­pay­ers’ funds. The case file for this mat­ter dis­ap­peared and then reap­peared af­ter an in­ves­ti­ga­tion was com­mis­sioned in 2023, along with shame­ful pub­lic­i­ty.

The ju­di­cial com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil de­nied the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s chal­lenge of the award last month. In­clu­sive of this $20 mil­lion award, I es­ti­mate that Naipaul-Cool­man’s mur­der has cost tax­pay­ers about $85 mil­lion. $85 mil­lion and no one will ever be brought to jus­tice for the crime. That Privy Coun­cil rul­ing is more suit­able for a first world crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. Not ours.

Dana See­ta­hal, SC, was al­so mur­dered, cu­ri­ous­ly, as she func­tioned as a spe­cial state pros­e­cu­tor in the Naipaul-Cool­man mat­ter. Twelve years af­ter her mur­der, no one has been con­vict­ed for it ei­ther. Hard luck, tax­pay­ers!

In 2022, the ju­di­cial com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil ruled that mur­der should be a bail­able of­fence. Af­ter com­pli­ance, our na­tion’s av­er­age an­nu­al mur­der rate climbed above 600 un­til the se­ries of states of emer­gency, which trad­ed con­sti­tu­tion­al rights for a dent in the crime rate. Tax­pay­ers now owe $1.15 mil­lion to the es­tate of Ak­ili Charles long af­ter he was de­nied the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ap­ply for bail when he was charged along with oth­ers for the mur­der of Rus­sell An­toine in 2010.

It seems that tax­pay­ers’ time and mon­ey are well and tru­ly wast­ed when high pro­file cas­es end up at the Privy Coun­cil. Per­haps these judg­ments are more ap­plic­a­ble to de­vel­oped coun­try jus­tice? Who is fix­ing our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem?

In Jan­u­ary, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie an­nounced that the State was drop­ping civ­il lit­i­ga­tion against An­dre Mon­teil and Stone Street Cap­i­tal Ltd, the es­tate of Lawrence Duprey and Dal­co Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment Ltd. and Gi­ta Sakal, 17 years af­ter the CLF col­lapse and about $4 bil­lion wast­ed on le­gal, ac­count­ing and oth­er fees. Hard luck, tax­pay­ers!

Min­is­ter of Jus­tice De­vesh Ma­haraj would cer­tain­ly be in­ter­est­ed in the ef­fi­cient de­liv­ery of jus­tice and val­ue for mon­ey for law-abid­ing cit­i­zens. Much more needs to be done.

I re­cent­ly saw Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der do­ing an im­pres­sion of a la­dy at a mi­grant reg­is­tra­tion ex­er­cise. It was en­ter­tain­ing.

Chief Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh has been in the chair for a mat­ter of months but there is much to do. Has he been able to get the ju­di­cia­ry to speed up tri­als? Are there enough qual­i­fied per­son­nel? Is court in­fra­struc­ture ad­e­quate? Could AI and digi­ti­sa­tion save us bil­lions of dol­lars and years? Does Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard have suf­fi­cient per­son­nel and oth­er re­sources? Sim­i­lar ques­tions are asked of Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro. These in­di­vid­u­als are best placed to res­cue our na­tion’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. Do they have the tools and the will?

We are in an­oth­er SoE. It’s the third since late 2024, the first was in­sti­tut­ed by the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment gov­ern­ment and the last two by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment. It seems to be the “go to” crime re­duc­tion mea­sure. At the con­clu­sion of the pre­vi­ous SoE in Jan­u­ary, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was tar­get­ing the crim­i­nals when she said that she would “have no hes­i­ta­tion in en­act­ing an­oth­er SoE if you can­not be­have your­selves”. They ob­vi­ous­ly didn’t be­have.

Many who were held dur­ing the last SoE for var­i­ous of­fences were re­leased with­out charge. Still, the SoE gives the crim­i­nals a longer va­ca­tion. The SoEs seem to mit­i­gate some of the fall­out from mak­ing mur­der and oth­er se­ri­ous crimes bail­able.

The ZOSO Bill was an­oth­er tool that could have had ef­fect but the Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dents brought amend­ments which the Gov­ern­ment did not ac­cept. I think it should be brought back with a bi­par­ti­san ap­proach. Com­pro­mise can get it passed. These tem­po­rary and ge­o­graph­i­cal crime fight­ing mea­sures may be more suit­able to our de­vel­op­ing jus­tice sys­tem.

Would PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar, along with the key lead­ers in lo­cal jus­tice de­liv­ery, roll back the Bail Act’s ac­com­mo­da­tions for mur­der ac­cused? Hasn’t there been enough pussy­foot­ing with an­ti-crime leg­is­la­tion over the last decade and more.

What about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment? As we have a pedan­tic jus­tice in­fra­struc­ture mis­matched with brazen crim­i­nal­i­ty, we could con­sid­er bring­ing back some match­ing con­se­quences. When our crim­i­nal el­e­ment re­learns how to fear law en­force­ment and the se­vere reper­cus­sions for in­fringe­ment, se­ri­ous crime will come down. When our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem ad­vances, then more “de­vel­oped na­tion per­mis­sive­ness could be en­ter­tained.”

crim­i­nals. We don’t have to be as ex­treme as El Sal­vador but our Prime Min­is­ter could still tell the se­ri­ous crim­i­nals: “Who vex loss”. If the State keeps los­ing at the Privy Coun­cil, it might be time to re­sort to the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice in­stead.

PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar would have re­turned from the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as Sum­mit head­ed by US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump. We ex­pect that she would have ad­vanced our se­cu­ri­ty and eco­nom­ic in­ter­ests sig­nif­i­cant­ly. We have seen how Iran has tar­get­ed US in­ter­ests in the Mid­dle East af­ter be­ing at­tacked by the Unit­ed States and Is­rael.

Our cit­i­zen­ry would al­so like our coun­try to re­main far from con­flict.