Letter of the Day | Why are we more British than the British?
Published:Friday | February 16, 2024 | 12:06 AM
THE EDITOR, Madam:
Many interested in the Kartel appeal found themselves glued to the live hearings on Ash Wednesday. The appeal has drawn international attention including the likes of BET and Fox news.
The legal issues are of great public importance. The case concerns one of the best known DJs along with three others, will soon know their fate with the passage of over 12 years behind bars. For me, the case is not just about the law. It has resurrected our colonial history imposed on us for centuries. The Privy Council (PC) came into being on the August 14, 1833, the very year of the passage of The Slavery Abolition Act. The PC has been our final court of appeal from Emancipation day until today.
Section 110 of our Constitution, framed at Buckingham Palace in April 1962, gives Jamaicans the right to appeal to His Majesty in Council, King Charles II. As I observed the proceedings in the PC, we have embarrassingly managed to remain more British than the British themselves. The Privy Council judges are in their suits and dresses for men and women, respectively. The Jamaican judges were all outfitted in black gowns with white shirts/blouses and white collars with tails called “tabs”. We lawyers were compelled by our rules to be in flowing gowns and in white shirts and tabs. In the Privy Council, both judges and lawyers were in coloured shirts and coloured neck ties. If I wore that to court in Jamaica, I would be barred from addressing the court, yet our highest court, the PC allows us to dress down like its judges do.
Appeals to the Privy Council are provided for at section 110 of the Constitution, being “An appeal ... to His Majesty in Council” yet, when that King’s court opened, no police officer shouted, as they do in every single sitting of trial courts in Jamaica, “God Save the King”. Here, “God save the King” is recited at every sitting a minimum of four times daily. I have personally written to two chief justices in Jamaica asking them to retire the pronouncement of “God save the King”, replacing it with “God save the People”, however, nothing has been done to remove this horrible mis-statement in the space we deliver justice to our people. There is no section in the chairs provided for lawyers in the PC reserved for King’s Counsel only as obtains in Jamaica.
Though we have the right to trial in public, that is hearings in open court in Jamaica, you cannot take a video camera into the court room, neither are trials or appeals allowed to be live-streamed. The PC hearings being live streamed were available to the victim’s family, the accused, their families and friends and the public at large from any location on the planet. These live stream hearings are necessary to allow justice to be open and visible taking the process from being hidden behind the thick walls of our court rooms.
Mental slavery continues to loom large in our minds. So many contradictions come to the surface as we crown Marley, honour Garvey, but at one and the same time we still spend sacred hours before justice is dispensed to our people, asking God to save the King of an oppressive foreign kingdom.This is why we are so comfortable being more British than the British.
BERT SAMUELS
Attorney at Law