AG: Changes to Bail Act urgent
Murder accused will find it harder to get bail as Government is tightening laws that will force them to prove why they should be released. While he recounted crime figures of 26 homicides for the year – 18 by firearms, five by the knife, one by scissors, one by wood and another through blunt force […]
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Murder accused will find it harder to get bail as Government is tightening laws that will force them to prove why they should be released.
While he recounted crime figures of 26 homicides for the year – 18 by firearms, five by the knife, one by scissors, one by wood and another through blunt force – Attorney General Dale Marshall told the House of Assembly yesterday the situation was urgent as he tabled the Bail Bill, 2024.
It contains a rash of provisions that go beyond the 2019 amendment, as it places the burden on the accused to provide evidence for bail and allows for the prosecution to appeal if bail is given. The move comes even as the Court of Appeal has a case before it on whether a section of the act, amended five years ago, is unconstitutional.
Maintaining law and order
“It is urgent because the situation that we face is urgent. Individuals are getting bail every day in circumstances where right-thinking members of our society, if they were judges, they would not want to give bail. We also have a public that is rightfully asking: ‘Why, why, why are courts giving bail so easily to the criminal element?’
“What it does is embolden them, they feel that they are going to get bail easy so they come out and do what they want to do and the society becomes the real victim. This matter is urgent because the Government recognises we can’t wait
until the Court of Appeal delivers its decision, nor can we wait when we have a good idea that this approach is one that will assist us in maintaining law and order in Barbados,” the Attorney General said.
Drawing on the South African system which is constitutionally similar to Barbados, there is provision for the court to order a defendant detained in accordance with the law unless bail is “in the interest of justice”.
Murder and firearm offences were the most offensive and cancerous to the society and must be dealt with differently, Marshall insisted.
Greater good
“It is a requirement that is very, very different to what currently exists in the law. There may be some trepidation of approaching the matter of a constitutional right to bail in this way by appearing to make it harder for an accused person to get bail, but what we are doing is acting in the best interest of a society. It is standard constitutional theory that rights given to you in the Constitution have to give way to the greater good of the society.”
Bail will no longer be based on some applications by attorneys citing fatherhood or jobs. The court will have to consider whether the release of the accused will not be in the interest of public order, safety or security.
Judges must deny bail if the nature of the offence is likely to induce shock or outrage in a community, Marshall told the House, as he referenced the Sheraton Mall public execution in 2019 and the 2010 Campus Trendz murder of six women who were burnt to death.
“These are the types of things that will induce shock and outrage in our community and, rightly so, this bill will say bail is not in your favour.”
He also spoke about the shock and outrage leading to public disorder if the defendant is released as one of the conditions that could bar bail, or if the defendant’s life is at risk.
“There are individuals who are on bail who got shot down and killed. We had an instance where a person was on bail for murder only a few Saturday nights ago and a vehicle pulled up, shot him dead.”
He said the peace of the public being jeopardised, or the release of the accused undermining public confidence in the criminal justice system were also factors.
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