THE EDITOR, Sir:
THE RESPONSIBILITY for Jamaica's high daily murder rate and the pitiless assault of gunmen who terrorise our communities, in town and country, slaughtering women, children, the elderly and infirm, without mercy or reason, must lie squarely on the shoulders of the government who for years have failed to restrain criminals by applying the death penalty according to law.
Whether in home, school, or workplace, if you promise offenders that if they commit, or repeat, certain offences, they will receive a certain punishment, and you repeatedly fail to carry out your word, then they take you for a joke, and they are emboldened to continue, and to do even worse. It is as simple as that!
The Scripture in Ecclesiastes 8:16 speaks to this: "Because sentence against an evil work is not speedily executed, therefore the heart of men is set in them to do evil."
So, today's criminals dare, defy, and challenge the authorities, and openly commit unprovoked assaults on the police, because they commit murders and get away with it.
The time was many years ago, when there were those on death row who had exhausted all
possible appeals, that a writer asked, "Can the country possibly stomach the spectacle of having one hanging every week until all the sentences are carried out?" That thought, for them, was too chilling! How then, does the country today stand the spectacle of not one murder per day, but two, three, four, five, and six murders per day, including double murders, and triple murders?
BUSINESS AS USUAL
The authorities who are responsible for the country's safety proceed with business as usual, like the fabled Nero who fiddled while Rome burnt, or Madame Defarge knitting while heads rolled during the French Revolution. We have become anaesthetised, paralysed and impotent, crippled and disabled, hobbling from one experiment to the other, without the will and the guts to carry out the law. In the meantime, we are treated to the sophistry of the statistician, the sociologist and the psychiatrist, who state that the carrying out of the death penalty is no deterrent to murder. Really?
Well, count 12 years backward from the last hanging when the death penalty was applied, and check the murder rate then. Now, check the past 12 years when hanging has been suspended by the government, and compare the murder rate in the two periods.
Isn't it clear for even a simpleton to see that the murder rate has escalated out of all proportion and out of control when the death penalty has not been applied? What greater proof do we need? There is a breakdown of law and order and the country teeters on the brink of anarchy! Government's inaction has sent the wrong message to the would-be murderer: that the lives of Jamaica's citizens can be taken with impunity, while the murderer's life has the protection of law!
Over the past few years, thousands of Jamaican families have been traumatised with grief and scars, because their loved ones have been murdered. Most of the perpetrators have not been apprehended. There is a universal cry for justice (not revenge), because, in their perception, the justice system is inept and is
in shambles. More vigilante killings and beatings occur. Justice is under siege. For many persons, to live a quiet, peaceful life in one's community is no longer a right. It has become a luxury because of the all-pervasive gunman.
Competent legal opinion has been expressed that despite the Privy Council Pratt decision, the penalty can be carried out if it is done within five years of sentence being passed. Does the government have the guts to take a stand and send a new message to the murderer: Enough is enough. If you take a life you forfeit your own.
I am etc,
SAMUEL A.
FITZ-HENLEY
12 Stilwell Road,
P.O. Box 799,
Kingston 8
