THE EDITOR, Sir:
AT THE great risk of being accused of defending the devil I am calling upon Operation Kingfish and the Police High Command to supply some missing information so that guardians of our justice system might be satisfied that 'Bulbie' Bennett's death was unavoidable and justified. The clarification is necessary if thinking people are not to place this police action in the same class of others where the rights of citizens have been trampled upon with marked impunity.
Up to now, the public can only judge on the basis of media reports - which are themselves based almost exclusively on police statements - and close-up pictures of the building in which the deceased were supposed to have been engaged in a shoot-out, which shows no mark of any hostile exchange. I have heard no explanation of how the police got through the heavily iron-grilled exterior or how they managed to overwhelm and kill the alerted occupants without themselves sustaining so much as a scratch. The hurried removal of the bodies and the seemingly secret post-mortem can only provide fodder for the sceptics. Also in question is the case of the sole civilian eye-witness, of whom precious little has been heard or seen since being held by the police.
SATISFYING CURIOSITY
There are more questions than answers here but I am more in search of justice for all rather than satisfying curiosity about the crimes of an accused gangster. Bulbie and his accomplices may not have been angels but our legal system requires that all effort be made to have them apprehended, judged and found guilty before any form of execution takes place. Law-abiding citizens do not demonstrate their own civility by summarily disposing of deviants without a fair hearing.
In this regard, one cannot help recalling that this is the 140th anniversary of the judicial murder of George William Gordon who, in his time, was railroaded through a biased court and hanged because he was considered a troublesome man.
As it was in Gordon's case, so it is today when Jamaicans seem relatively reluctant to support justice for all, regardless. In 1865 it was the people of England who raised their voices and the noted T.H. Huxley, mulling over the injustices surrounding the then Jamaican Government's role in the Morant Bay Rebellion, wrote: "... unless I am misinformed, English law does not permit good persons, as such, to strangle bad persons, as such."
VIRTUOUS PERSON
On the contrary, I understand that, if the most virtuous of Britons, let his place and authority be what they may, seize and hang up the greatest scoundrel in Her Majesty's dominions simply because he is an evil and troublesome person, an English court of justice will certainly find that virtuous person guilty of murder. Nor will the verdict be affected by any evidence that the defendant acted from the best of motives, and, on the whole, did the state a service.
"Unless the Royal Commis-sioners have greatly erred, therefore, the killing of Mr. Gordon can only be defended on the ground that he was a bad and troublesome man; in short, that although he might not be guilty, it served him right. I entertain so deeply-rooted an objection to this method of killing people - the act itself appears to me to be so frightful a precedent, that I desire to see it stigmatised by the highest authority as a crime."
To all concerned I commend another quote from Huxley: "It is not who is right but what is right that counts."
I am, etc.,
KEN JONES
alllerdyce@hotmail.com.
