Gun Court - Criticism

Criticism

The Gun Court has faced criticism on several fronts, most notably for its departure from traditional practices, for its large backlog of cases, and for the continuing escalation in gun violence since its institution.

At the time of the 1976 amendments to the Act, the Jamaican Bar Association protested against the lack of jury trials and the harsh mandatory sentences. According to a report in the Virgin Islands Daily News, the Association's Bar Council objected to the possibility that children as young as 12 could be imprisoned for life, without release or appeal, for small offences such as being found with used ammunition. The abrogation of jury trial has also been criticized by attorney and law professor David Rowe, the son of the Appeals Court justice who wrote the decision in the Stone case upholding the practice. Rowe argues that the common-law right to a jury trial is implied in the Constitutional provision for "a fair hearing within a reasonable time, by an independent and impartial court established by law," concluding that the Constitution had been "shorn of its most potent and ancient safeguard, trial by jury."

The 1993 County Report on Human Rights Practices in Jamaica from the United States Department of State noted the denial of a "fair public trial" and alleged that Gun Court trials observe "less rigorous rules of evidence than in regular court proceedings." The Canadian Bar Association's Jamaican Justice System Reform Task Force, in its preliminary recommendations, noted that the Gun Court is overloaded, that defendants are not well represented, and Crown attorneys are often inexperienced. The report recommended that trials no longer be held in camera, and that cases be moved to the ordinary Circuit Court to relieve the overburdened Gun Court. It did not take issue with non-jury trials, suggesting that the same practice might be used in more types of cases for greater efficiency.

Although the Gun Court was intended to expedite cases, bringing defendants to trial within seven days, defendants now often wait several years. The backlog was nearing 1000 cases in 1998, and in the 2003-2004 court year, the High Court division carried forward 3,367 cases already on the docket, added 613 new cases, and concluded 462. Senior Resident Magistrate Glenn Brown expressed dissatisfaction with the public prosecutors for taking too long to prepare cases, often because of difficulty in finding and bringing witnesses. Brown noted that "Seventy per cent of the persons who are before the courts have been here for an inordinately long period of time - three to four years."

The Gun Court system has been put forth by gun ownership advocates as an example of a failed regime of gun control. In an essay in the National Review in 2001, Dave Kopel argued that "he Gun Court took guns only out of the hands of Jamaica's law-abiding, leaving them at the mercy of the criminals and the state." John R. Lott has argued that "gun-control laws have failed to deliver as promised," noting that the murder rate in Jamaica was lower before the introduction of stricter gun control: it rose from 11.5 to 19.5 per 100,000 between 1973 and 1977, and reached 41.7 per 100,000 in 1980. By 2007 the rate had risen to 1,574 murders in the calendar year, or 59 per 100,000 inhabitants.