THE FACTS of the case are straightforward enough. Four young men pleaded guilty in the Home Circuit Court to the prosecution's allegations that theyhad beaten a 62-year-old man who had objected to his nephew, whom he had allowed to share his house, moving in a female companion also.
The beating having been administered, the nephew - who incidentally is a deportee - and his partners in crime, bound the uncle's hands, threw him in the trunk of their car and drove him several miles to a beach where the nephew drowned him in the sea.
Thanks to the professionalism of Detective Deputy Supt. Kelso Small and his team of investigators, the four accused men were tracked down, a seamless case was built against them and they were put before the court on a charge of murder.
On Monday, they sought to plead guilty not to the murder with which they were charged, but to the lesser charge of manslaughter. Inexplicably, their pleas were accepted on the ground that the accused had been provoked by their victim - the battered old man whose hands were tied.
Now as we understand it, provocation would be some act or series of acts done by the dead man to the accused which would cause in any reasonable person and actually caused in the accused, a sudden and temporary loss of self-control, rendering the accused so subject to passion as to make them for the moment, not masters of their minds.
As we understand it, the question whether the provocation was enough to make reasonable men do as the four accused men admitted that they did, should have been left to be determined by the jury. But that did not happen. The prosecution accepted their guilty pleas which were sanctioned by the Judge who heard the prosecution outline the facts of the case.
Now the question the public should get an answer to is in what way did this battered and bound old man provoke the four men while they were taking him from the car and putting him in the sea to be drowned (by his nephew)? What was the provocation that the prosecutor deemed was not advisable to be left to a jury?
But even if a silly mistake was made in accepting the guilty-of-manslaughter pleas, weren't senior prosecutors in the Department of Public Prosecutions aware of the pleas that had been accepted on Monday in the Home Circuit Court? If not, why not? And if they did, why did they not do something about it?
Had they not come across the case of the Queen vs. Lloydel Richards? Richards, a minibus driver who was charged with the murder of a schoolgirl, had pleaded guilty in the Home Circuit Court in September 1983 to manslaughter. The then Director of Public Prosecutions went to court the following day, entered a nolle prosequi and Richards was tried and convicted of murder.
We are at a loss to understand how this seeming travesty of justice in the Ivan Gurdon murder case could have been allowed to happen.
The least that the public of Jamaica expects now is an explanation by the Director of Public Prosecutions.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
