‘He who is without sin ...’

There are indications that no rigorous due diligence was conducted for popular pastor Merrick ‘Al’ Miller before he was selected for a national award.

Despite this, however, one member of the committee that conferred on Miller the Commander of the Order of Distinction has used the biblical story of the woman caught in adultery to fire back at critics of the controversial move.

Miller, the founding pastor of Fellowship Tabernacle, the St Andrew-based mega church, has two criminal convictions – one of them tied to the deadly events of May 2010, easily the darkest period in modern Jamaican history.

Still, he was among 144 awardees selected this year by the National Honours and Awards Subcommittee of Cabinet, chaired by Dr Horace Chang, deputy prime minister and minister of national security.

All nominations for national honours and awards must be accompanied by a recommendation and “a story about why they should be awarded”.

“People are nominated by a cross-section of people of standing and they send a CV [résumé] for each person,” Chang disclosed.

“We tend to go by the CV, generally speaking, so that’s essentially what happened,” Chang admitted during a recent interview with The Sunday Gleaner, explaining how Miller’s conviction could have escaped the committee.

He declined to comment further, indicating that he is prohibited from discussing a decision of Cabinet.

A CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY

The award, which will be formally presented on National Heroes Day later this year, has been met with criticism from those who argue that Miller’s inclusion belittles the award system, irrespective of commendations from those who cite his decades of service to the religious community.

While acknowledging that Miller’s convictions were not included in the recommendation that accompanied his nomination, Ed Bartlett, another member of the Cabinet subcommittee, is standing by the decision.

“We are a Christian community… , and Jesus said it clearly, ‘he who is without sin, let him cast the first stone’,” said Bartlett, the tourism minister, citing Jesus’ response to the mob in the biblical story after it demanded punishment for a woman accused of adultery.

The other members of the eight-member committee are Desmond McKenzie, Olivia ‘Babsy’ Grange, Karl Samuda, Kamina Johnson Smith, Marlene Malahoo Forte, and Senator Aubyn Hill, the Office of the Prime Minister has confirmed.

Rev Miller was first convicted in 2011 for negligence resulting in the loss of his licensed firearm. The gun was stolen from his car as he stopped to pick plums at a St Andrew school, he said at the time. He was sentenced to a fine of $80,000.

His second and more serious conviction came five years later, in July 2016, when the popular clergyman was found guilty of attempting to pervert the course of justice and sentenced to a $1 million fine.

He was charged in 2010 after drug kingpin Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke was apprehended in his sport utility vehicle in St Catherine on June 22 that year.

Miller, who is appealing the conviction, has insisted that at all times, the Jamaican police were aware that he was taking Coke to the United States (US) Embassy in St Andrew to surrender.

TENSION ACROSS JAMAICAN

Coke’s arrest ended weeks of mounting tension across the Jamaican capital, triggered by the months-long delay by the then Bruce Golding-led Government to authorise his extradition to the US to face drug charges.

A month before the arrest, Coke mysteriously escaped his West Kingston stronghold of Tivoli Gardens after two days of fierce clashes between the security forces and heavily armed thugs loyal to him.

When the shooting ended, 69 civilians and one member of the Jamaica Defence Force were killed in what became known as the Tivoli Gardens Incursion.

However, Bartlett disclosed that Miller’s recommendation was “sufficiently strong to convince the committee that he is deserving of the honour”.

“The power and quality of a recipient’s contribution cannot be effaced by an error in judgement in time in your life,” he said.

“You wouldn’t have a recommendation that include a conviction. You are not honouring someone for a conviction. You are honouring them because they have been able to overcome the difficulties in life and excel and make a contribution that is exemplary.”

Bartlett, like Miller, noted that nearly all the great men in history have had “moments of concern” in their lives.

“But they have overcome it, and in overcoming it,, they have made enormous contributions to the development of the human family and that is what defines them,” Miller told The Sunday Gleaner during a recent interview.

livern.barrett@gleanerjm.com