The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Senior Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

CHIEF Justice Brian Moree said an acting coroner will be appointed “very soon”, allowing for the resumption of inquests into police-involved killings and other matters.

The Bahamas, which has one of the highest rates of police-involved killings in the world, has not had an inquest into a killing in 17 months.

Inquests were halted in March 2020 because of COVID-19. They were supposed to resume after the Coroner’s Court was outfitted with plexiglass barriers in April of this year.

Former Coroner Jeanine Weech-Gomez was sworn in as a Supreme Court justice in May and has not been replaced. However, Justice Weech-Gomez did oversee an inquest relating to the deaths of missing Hurricane Dorian victims earlier this year before her reassignment.

Chief Magistrate Joyann Ferguson-Pratt has served as the acting coroner and has visited scenes of killings, but has not held any inquests.

Outside Parliament yesterday, Chief Justice Moree said: “The Judicial Legal Services Commission has advised the Governor General to make an appointment of an acting coroner, which will be announced probably sometime, I believe, this week or next week. At the moment we do have three or four deputy coroners so the work of the coroner has continued, but an acting coroner will be announced very shortly.

“Inquests will resume. One of the functions of the coroner is to sign release documents when persons die. That is being done by the deputy coroners. The inquests will resume very shortly after the appointment of the acting coroner. We expect that to happen if not this month, certainly the first week of September.”

Chief Justice Moree could not say how many cases are a part of the backlog.

“The former coroner, now Justice Weech Gomez, was working her way through the backlog, including some of the Dorian cases, so we have a schedule, I’d have to get that number for you, but there are quite a few so the Coroner’s Court and the inquests are going to be very busy,” he said.

Before court proceedings for police involved killings were suspended last year, the court was scheduled to hold an inquest into the 2018 death of Deangelo Evans, a 20-year-old man whose killing in Masons Addition alarmed the community.