The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Senior Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

THE Bahamas has not had an inquest into a police-involved killing in at least 17 months, despite having one of the highest rates of police-involved killings in the world.

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.

However, former Coroner Jeanine Weech-Gomez was sworn in as a Supreme Court Justice in May and has not yet been replaced.

The Tribune understands that while Chief Magistrate Joyann Ferguson-Pratt is the Acting Coroner and has visited scenes of killings as required, she has not yet held inquests.

Before court proceedings 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.

The Governor-General appoints coroners on the advice of the Judicial and Legal Service Commission, according to the Coroner’s Act.

Questions to the Office of the Chief Justice were not answered before press time yesterday.

There have been at least six police-involved killings this year. In the most recent case, police killed a man in June who allegedly assaulted an elderly lady and shot a young man who followed him.

The country has one of the highest per-capita rates of police involved killings in the world and recorded 11 such killings in 2017, 2018 and 2020.

Backlogs of cases and lengthy periods without inquests are a recurrent problem for the Coroner’s Court. For years very few inquests took place until Attorney General Carl Bethel in 2017 admitted that the backlog was “distressing” and “unacceptable.” The court then held 18 inquests between January 2018 and June 2019, three of which resulted in unlawful killing rulings and one of which resulted in an open verdict finding. The other killings were deemed lawful.

Englerston MP Glenys Hanna-Martin said yesterday that the government should address the backlog of cases and urgently appoint a coroner.

“Just as the government saw it as a matter of urgency to appoint additional judges to deal with caseload matters, it was incumbent on them to understand the role of the coroner in the administration of justice in this country,” she said. “To vacate that office to meet one need without on a concurrent basis immediately replacing that individual particularly in light of the long delay that happened in the pandemic and the adjustments that were made to the court is an issue. It seems to me that it ought to have been obvious what needed to be done and they are urged to immediately put a replacement in place for that critical role and function.”

“Because of the inordinate or peculiarly high number of police killings in this country when compared to countries globally, it is necessary. I think that when you have state involved killings through the institution of the Royal Bahamas Police Force, it is in the interest of that institution and in national security to address the matters from the point of view that people must have confidence in the ability of police to maintain order in the country. When resolutions are brought about in a fair and timely fashion, that would quell concerns, quell suspicions, answer questions and bring a formal legitimacy or otherwise to what has happened on the ground in these incidents. When you see case after case after case after case and no resolution, then it takes on a different spectre as to what’s happening in this country and there has to be accountability.”