A THREAT to kill two judges sitting in the Spanish Town Resident Magistrate's Court disrupted proceedings on Monday and signalled a new level of threat to the criminal justice system. Resumption of trials the following day came with high security precautions, including metal detectors to shield entry to the court building and special guards for the magistrates.
All of this was prompted by threats phoned into the court offices. In the context of the deterioration of law and order in the Old Capital, such threats would have to be taken seriously; moreso in the aftermath of the killing of a major gang leader which sparked hostility of criminal elements and their supporters and actual attacks on the police.
The threat to judges is an ominous development and may well have been the first such publicly acknowledged, as far as we are aware. It is yet another blow to a system in which key witnesses have been targeted, obviously with a view to frustrate court trials. We do not know with any degree of certainty how effective witness protection programmes have been, but reports persist about attacks on witnesses to serious crimes.
Shifting this type of threat to sitting judges is a brazen defiance of the very notion of dispensing justice in a civilised state. The very officers of the court and all who make it function are put under the gun, so to speak.
The added security that becomes necessary must add a measure of duress in which the dispassionate administration of prosecution and defence are likely to be affected. And court personnel, like witnesses, can be subject to harm beyond the precincts of the court. Prior to this development, the emphasis on crime fighting has been in the field with the security forces pitted against wrongdoing at every level from criminal gangs to the intricacies of white collar crime.
The penultimate process of gathering and collating evidence for the final proceedings in courts of law is supposed to be the hallmark of a civilised society preserving its peace and stability. Judges and juries dispensing justice are bulwarks against the evil doers who would destroy this state of affairs. All of us who are law-abiding must rise to the defence of this threat to the nation.
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