{"id":67422,"date":"2014-06-04T09:03:01","date_gmt":"2014-06-04T13:03:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/target\/former-senior-police-officer-blames-lawyers-for-trial-delays"},"modified":"2014-06-04T09:03:01","modified_gmt":"2014-06-04T13:03:01","slug":"lawyers-to-blame-for-trial-delays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/2014\/06\/lawyers-to-blame-for-trial-delays","title":{"rendered":"Lawyers To Blame For Trial Delays"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Fat
Fat Cat Lawyers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Former Assistant Commissioner of the Royal Bahamas Police Force Paul Thompson yesterday blamed lawyers for trials taking so long to begin in the Bahamas.<\/p>\n

Mr Thompson, who appeared as the guest on a local radio talk show, said there are far too many things that stand in the way of a trial starting and ending as early as it should, with the main problem being lawyers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the gun court was started, they were seated to try cases as quickly as possible,\u201d the retired ACP said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were hoping that within two weeks we could have a trial started. But lawyers changed that. Lawyers then started asking for adjournments. The possession of firearm or drugs cases, for example, are short. A firearm is found in a car with bullets. Three police witnesses, usually the two officers who found it and another officer from the firearms department. That should take 25 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTake, for example, the case with Mr John Bostwick. He has to wait now until September. That\u2019s too long. Then you see, my feeling is that somebody should talk to the magistrates about these long adjournments. The lawyers have taken control of the dates to be set in court. They come in and say they can\u2019t make this date and that date.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Mr Thompson, whenever a suspect is held in custody after four or five years, they must then be released because it would become unlawful to hold them.<\/p>\n

He said this is where the problem comes in because a lot of them turn around and commit worse crimes or end up dead. Last week, three men recently released on bail, two of whom were on trial for murder, were shot in the head and killed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI must commend the Attorney General and her efforts to get Swift Justice going,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s going to be costly. If you\u2019re going to have ten courts with jurors coming in, it\u2019s going to be costly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another issue the former ACP said is enabling the release of criminals and the eventual continuation of their criminal activity is \u201ctrial by jury.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think as far as trials in the Supreme Court go, we should really look at having trials by judges,\u201d Mr. Thompson said. \u201cI once sat in a trial where it took them two hours to select a jury. We are wasting time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Thompson said he knows of several cases where the verdict was almost a guilty one; however, the failure of the jury to reach a unanimous decision was the stumbling stone.<\/p>\n

By KYLE WALKINE<\/strong><\/em><\/span>
\nTribune Staff Reporter<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Click here to read the original article at tribune242.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former Assistant Commissioner of Police, Paul Thompson says there are far too many things that stand in the way of a trial starting and ending as early as it should, with the main problem being lawyers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":20668,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[93,32,31,49,123],"class_list":["post-67422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-corruption","tag-courts","tag-crime","tag-law","tag-lawyers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}