The Tribune

By CELESTE NIXON Tribune Staff Reporter cnixon@tribunemedia.net PRIME Minister Hubert Ingraham accused The Nassau Guardian of behaviour unbecoming a newspaper following a "nit-picking" article about murder conviction statistics. The article, published yesterday, claimed Attorney General John Delaney provided inaccurate figures to the public, in particular statistics on the number of people convicted of murder under the FNM. But, Mr Ingraham said, while some of the convicts listed by Mr Delaney had their conviction overturned or were found guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter, they were all still convicted. He said: "I find this unbelievable! I find this as a nit-picking exercise, if that's the basis of what you put forward in the story, that's a great distortion. "In fact, a political party involved in a campaign would not put forward such a thing. That's the height of propaganda and unbecoming of a newspaper." Mr Ingraham's comments came at a celebratory luncheon yesterday for the CC Sweeting High School basketball team, which won the 2012 Hugh Campbell basketball tournament in February. Mr Delaney also responded to the article, describing it as a "distraction." He said regardless of the statistics, the murder conviction rate is not an accurate reflection on how the criminal system is functioning. "Using the conviction rate as a litmus test for the justice system is a wrong standard," he said. He added that even if the inaccuracies listed in the article prove to be correct, the murder conviction would still be "significantly greater" under the FNM government than it was under the PLP - who first sought to use the issue as a measure of judicial performance. Mr Delaney said the list of convictions he provided to the Senate in February reflected the state of the Supreme Court records, but said The Guardian's claims will be investigated anyway. Defending his government's crime record, Mr Ingraham said the FNM has exceeded its objective of having serious cases heard in two years, with every case since 2011 set down for trial within 18 months of the date of the charge. He said: "I am very pleased at the progress we are making with the judicial system of The Bahamas. The PLP has a distorted ad on the television that goes every 15 minutes. The facts are: we have now been able to cause serious cases like murder to be set down for trial within 18 months of the charge being laid in court. "It's wonderful progress we've made. Check it. That may be a good story - it may not get a headline, but it is factual," he said. The PLP issued a statement yesterday, saying the "inaccurate" crime data is another example of the attorney general and the FNM "misleading" Bahamians, and of the government's unwillingness to produce accurate information on crime in an election year. It said: "They have mismanaged and neglected the criminal justice system: they cancelled the PLP's Swift Justice programme, which had established a track record for bringing matters swiftly to court; they built a new court complex, at considerable cost to Bahamians, which neglected to provide space for prosecutors, and they hired a foreigner to run prosecutions, with terrible results. "Violence and crime have skyrocketed - records for murder have been set in the last four out of five years. Unable to defend their crime policies, the FNM has resorted to misleading the public."