Dear Editor,
Please permit me to share with your readers a recent experience of mine. A few months ago, while navigating the Diamond-Grove junction on my way home from work, I was stopped and issued a traffic ticket for the offence of “failing to stop when required by police in uniform”. In my view, the officer with whom I interacted was way more aggressive than he needed to be since I did actually stop as directed, but then proceeded as originally instructed by another officer who was actually directing the traffic at the time. In any event, not wanting to plead guilty to an offence which I didn’t (in my view) commit, I opted to appear in court and plead not guilty. The ticket provides that option by requiring you to appear in court at a particular date and time unless you pay the fine within seven days. So, I didn’t pay the fine and, instead, waited for three months to have my day in court which was set for 9am on August 29th 2025.
I arrived at the Diamond Magistrate’s Court 8:40am. I waited downstairs until about 9:15am and then proceeded upstairs to Court 2 which was not yet open. I sat just outside the door on a bench and waited along with about eight other persons. A number of police officers were standing around, presumably waiting to address those cases which concerned them. Nothing happened until around 10:30am when a police officer came out and started calling out names of persons, the vast majority of whom were not present. This repeated itself several times as the few who were present entered the court, one at a time, to have their matters heard by the magistrate. Shortly after 11am the officer who was calling out the names asked me whether I was there to pay a ticket. I told him that I was there to plead not guilty to the offence indicated on the ticket which I then showed him. Ten minutes later he asked me for the ticket and entered the court with it. About five minutes after this I was invited into the court where I was informed by the magistrate that my matter had already been dealt with and, given my failure to attend court, I had been found guilty of the charge against me.
Upon enquiry, I learned that this had taken place while I was waiting just outside her court room hanging on to every syllable of every name called out by the police officer who was never more than six feet away from me and was, literally, bellowing out the names so that even persons who might be waiting in the yard outside could hear. When asked, this officer told the court that he had indeed called out my name. This is simply not true. I maintain this officer is a shameless liar and a disgrace to Guyana Police Force. The magistrate further explained to me that her guilty verdict could not be undone, and that my only options were to pay the fine, serve time in prison or hire a lawyer to appeal the ruling. I have since paid the fine. Life is too short.
I am fortunate not to have had much experience with Guyana’s justice system, but I do recall that the magistrate’s courts were once open to the public and cases called from inside the court so that there could never be any dispute as to whether a defendant’s case was called up or not. I am not sure whether restricted entry to the court room was introduced due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but any system which allows a person to be convicted in absentia while sitting just outside the court room waiting patiently and attentively to be called in is, in my view, absurdly unjust. Worse yet, when that system has no way of verifying that the person’s name was actually called, it becomes frighteningly vulnerable to abuse. The purpose of this letter is to highlight this vulnerability in the hope that it might be addressed by decision makers within the judiciary. Even McDonald’s has an electronic screen that displays the order numbers that have already been called out for pickup at the counter. Why would we choose a system that relies on the competence and integrity of a single police officer?