Judicial Review Court proceedings quash - Janice Allen case application for leave turned down
published: Tuesday | October 5, 2004

Barbara Gayle, Staff Reporter

CHIEF JUSTICE Lensley Wolfe has turned down the application in the Janice Allen case for leave to go to the Judicial Review Court for an order to quash proceedings in the Portland Circuit Court in March this year which led to the acquittal of the policeman who was charged in connection with her death.

"I am satisfied on the basis of the authorities cited that the proceedings of the Circuit Court, in particular the verdict of the jury, is not amenable to Judicial Review and cannot be quashed by certiorari," the Chief Justice said. He said further that to grant leave "in this matter, is in my view to act in vain."

The Chief Justice, in handing down his decision last week Friday, said tragic as the circumstances may be, the court had to be guided by principles of law rather than by emotion. He said merely to grant leave so that a full hearing could be had in circumstances where the claim was hopeless, was an exercise in futility.

APPEAL

Attorney-at-law Richard Small, one of the lawyers appearing in the case, said they were going to file an appeal against the Chief Justice's ruling.

Allen, 13, was shot and killed a few metres from her gate at Third Street, Trench Town, south St. Andrew on April 14, 2000. The police had reported that the girl was killed in crossfire between the police and gunmen. One of the girl's relatives reported that the girl was shot after the shootout had ceased.

Following intensive investigations by the police, Constable Rohan Allen, of the Denham Town Police Station was charged with manslaughter. Constable Allen (no relation to the deceased) was freed on March 15 this year. The jury was directed to return a formal verdict of not guilty after the Crown offered no evidence against him on the manslaughter charge based on reports that a vital witness for the Crown was abroad and could not be located. It later turned out that the report was false.

PROPER AUTHORITY

The Chief Justice said the only course open to Millcent Forbes, mother of the deceased, who brought the application in the Supreme Court, was to move the proper authority to have the matter properly investigated and "if it is established that the course of justice was perverted, to have those responsible for so doing brought to justice".

In response to the Chief Justice's comments, Dr. Carolyn Gomes, Executive Director of the human rights lobby group Jamaicans for Justice said "this is the very thing that we have come here asking the court to do." The group has taken a keen interest in the case.

The policeman's acquittal led to much public outcry from local and international human rights groups.

After Forbes filed the application, the Attorney-General who was represented at the hearing by attorneys-at-law Nicole Foster-Pusey and Carlene Larmond filed an application in the Supreme Court seeking to have the application struck out. The Chief Justice upheld their legal arguments that the Judicial Review Court did not have the power to overturn the outcome of cases in the Circuit Courts and further that the Attorney-General was not a proper defendant in judicial review proceedings.