As ex-politician Lester Turnquest said in a Tribune exclusive last week, the Joy Cartwright murder in the mid-1990s summed up all that is wrong with the Bahamas and its attitude to crime.
If you are influential enough, and know the right people, the law will turn a blind eye. The Cartwright killing and its aftermath was a prime example of selective justice – and its impact is still being felt right through the judicial system today.
Ms. Cartwright, a nightclub manager in her twenties, was an attractive, ambitious woman with a taste for the high life. She liked jewellery, fancy cars and pole position on the fast lane. She was gunned down in her Nassau apartment — struck by nine bullets in the chest – in what was thought to be a reprisal killing.
Although one man went to death row for the murder, many strongly believed others were being protected for political reasons. Police officers working on the case were appalled at constraints placed upon them.
Mr Turnquest said: “The failure of the Bahamian system of justice, as it relates to the Joy Cartwright murder, has had and will continue to have a profound effect not only on the system itself, but the attitude of Bahamians towards that system. The key figures in that fiasco have yet to explain their role.”
When low-life villains gain the impression that some can escape the law on the basis of their position, or the people they know, then the system is severely diminished and well on its way to collapse.
For it means that society itself – as represented by the government, its legal officials, its law enforcement agencies and the judiciary – does not have the moral authority to judge those who break its laws.
When politicians are too cowardly, or too corrupt, to bring people to justice because of their influential lineage, then everyone involved – and that includes the investigating officers themselves – are tainted by the process.
Such wanton abnegation of legal responsibility demoralises the law enforcers, emboldens the wrong-doers and cripples the rule of law.
There have been numerous instances in recent years where guilty men have walked free in the Bahamas because the system has been distorted in their favour by influential connections.
There have been many more where investigations have not even been allowed to get underway because of the social, religious or political links of the suspects.
If the libel laws in the Bahamas were not so stringent – and instead embraced the more realistic and infinitely preferable First Amendment principles of the US Constitution – we would be in a position to go into more detail. As things stand, we can’t. But informed Bahamians will know exactly who and what we are talking about when we discuss selective justice and its appalling implications.
Following a case some time ago, after a foreigner’s action against a local person had been thrown out by the courts, the prosecution and defence counsel were seen celebrating in a restaurant with the defendant, openly boasting how they had “screwed the court system” in the defendant’s favour.
There were raised glasses all round, and an air of heady euphoria as they toasted the defeat of the foreigner, whose case would have been considered impregnable under any other judicial system.
The defendant happened to be related to the wife of a leading politician.
No wonder they walked free – and no wonder the conspirators felt inclined to collude in engineering the acquittal. Together, they rolled another very large boulder across the tomb of the Bahamas legal system.
What makes Mr Turnquest’s comments so significant, and so admirable, is that he is only the second prominent Bahamian I can recall who has spoken out so forcefully and specifically on the crime issue.
For the most part, crime is discussed in general and statistical terms, which rarely achieve the desired effect. Mr. Turnquest zeroed in on the crux of the issue, the lack of moral strength among politicians – and their willingness to sacrifice the nation’s interests for expediency.
What he said – that Bahamian politicians don’t have the backbone to tackle crime because so many of their supporters are caught up in it – is so apt, so bang on the button.
Before the last general election in 2002, drug dealers in Bimini were openly boasting that they would be able to go about their business with impunity if the PLP came to power.
Whether what they said was true or not, they certainly felt it was. And drugs continue to be a major feature of the Bahamian scene today, with dealers openly touting their wares in the clubs and on the streets and beaches of Nassau.
Drugs, and the guns which are an inevitable by-product of the trafficking business, have so undermined Bahamian society that there is now a real danger that criminality could be rampant and out-of-control within the next decade.
The Rev C B Moss, whose Bain Town parish embraces some of Nassau’s seedier areas, told INSIGHT only a few weeks ago that the Bahamas could be another Jamaica in 10 to 15 years.
It’s conceivable that – given its head – crime will become so dominant a feature of Bahamian life that the Defence Force and the police will have to be on the streets in large numbers to quell the lawlessness. By then, of course, the national economy would be in ruins because tourists don’t like taking their holidays in places where thieves and gunmen are running loose. If you want examples of where economies have suffered, and even collapsed under the influence of the gunmen you don’t have to look far. Haiti. Jamaica and Trinidad are all suffering in varying degrees from the impact.
In all three, the rule of law has either vanished completely or is under severe threat. The Bahamas now has to choose whether to follow them down the path to oblivion or make a determined attempt to alter the course.
Last week’s warning to American residents from the US Embassy in Nassau was prompted by the latest spike in criminal activity. This has included rapes on the Eastern Road, mass robberies in crowded restaurants, and stabbings and shootings in abundance in the over-the-hill neighbourhoods.
Villains are now so emboldened by society’s inability to contain them that they are striking publicly – and often in broad daylight – in areas once considered off-limits for criminality.
For a long time, residents of respectable communities in Nassau consoled themselves with the thought that most Bahamian crime was confined to the ghettoes.
So long as the violence was of the thug-on-thug variety, with robberies centered on the shanty areas, the growing middle-class felt comfortable in their own fenced-off estates and leafy suburbs.
However, as Rev Moss pointed out, gangs in Trinidad have already gravitated beyond ghetto crime to exploit rich pickings among the bourgeoisie. Kidnapping for ransom money is now commonplace – and death for the victim is the preferred option among gangs who meet resistance to their demands.
If we’re not careful, he said, the Bahamas could end up in the same predicament.
Last week’s embassy statement marked a new level of awareness and concern among Americans.
US citizens living in the Bahamas were sent a roundrobin e-mail by embassy staff warning them to be extra vigilant in their daily lives – and to avoid doing “predictable” things.
They were given a checklist of precautions aimed at countering the sinister forces now at work in all our communities.
The alert was in response to a rash of crime over the last month and growing fears that the villainous element now holds the law and its enforcers in contempt.
Criminality
This encroachment by criminality on people’s lives is just one more step towards virtual incarceration in our own homes behind high walls, locked gates and barred windows.
Everything we now do, whether it’s visiting the foodstore or having a day at the beach, is blighted by a degree of anxiety and trepidation. “While we are imprisoned in our homes, the thieves and gunmen run free,” said one despondent householder.
As news of the embassy initiative hit the headlines, yet another missive was being sent out by Eastern Road residents warning neighbours to beware of the bad men now striking terror into what were once considered “safe” neighbourhoods.
It was one of a succession of warnings issued by concerned residents as criminals ride roughshod over them and their property.
With a hint of desperation, it said: “More bad news! Just to add to the tragic reports of last week, this morning I’ve heard on Eastern Road, next to (name of business) their car got broken into, and next door to that a robber entered someone’s house and was shot.
“Two doors down from that a woman was raped. She was on her porch smoking a cigarette, and they broke both of her wrists. Off Village Road, Woodland, a family, was held up in their driveway and robbed at gunpoint. People, please be careful, pass this around.”
Alongside people’s desperation sits a growing awareness that villains are apparently no longer afraid of the consequences of their actions. Their criminality is no longer covert and underhand – it is public and often flagrant.
The mass robberies of two Cable Beach restaurants two weeks ago, with customers being forced to hand over cash and credit cards by armed gangsters, were among the most recent examples of this new trend in blatant, devil-may-care crime in public places.
Last weekend, it hit a tragic peak when a teenager was brutally stabbed and kicked to death in front of scores of revellers at a Nassau nightclub.
As Glenn Fulford’s lifeblood drenched the poolside at Waterloo, he murmured “I’m going to die” to his best friend, who knelt helplessly alongside him. The friend told him he had to fight it, but after a tremor ran through his body. Glenn sighed and breathed his last.
A witness said it was as the public nature of the crime that shocked him most, along with the reluctance of bystanders to intervene. He was saddened that Bahamians had become so desensitised to such violence, and that so little respect was shown for another’s life.
More disturbing still was that the perpetrators seemed not to care whether they were seen or not. Glenn was butchered in front of literally dozens of witnesses.
When disdain for the law reaches such a point, citizens have a right to conclude that society is in a lethal downward plunge.
Lester Turnquest was right to cite politicians as the root cause of this worrying descent into bedlam.
Over many years, some of them have connived at – and in some cases been actively involved in – the evil drug trade which has sliced through the moral fabric of the nation and left it in shreds.
Today, they stand condemned for cowardice in failing to confront a problem which could, without exaggeration, ultimately be the nation’s downfall.
They are – as Mr Turnquest says – putting politics before the welfare and security of the Bahamas and its citizens in allowing selective justice to prevail: And they are scared of losing votes in bringing certain wrong-doers to justice.
Perhaps now is the time for them to show the intestinal fortitude needed to revisit crimes of the past in which the investigation and its outcome have been less than satisfactory.
The Joy Cartwright case would be an excellent place to start. For as long as this case remains unresolved, the judicial system will lack the moral authority to hold others to account.
Have they the guts to do it? Personally, I doubt it. But there are many thousands of Bahamians out there who will be hoping I’m wrong.
What do you think? Fax 328-2398 or e-mail: jmarquis@tribunemedia.net
From the INSIGHT column by JOHN MARQUIS
The Tribune, Nassau Bahamas
