Guyana in drugs battle front line
GUYANA is among front line states in the regional battle against drugs trafficking and a major project to help Police stop traffickers in court gets under way here today. Over the next four days, 62 selected Police prosecutors from Guyana and several Caribbean countries will undergo intensive drills to help them cope with techniques of defence lawyers in drugs cases, Project Coordinator, Ms. Faith Marshall-Harris said yesterday. She told reporters the four-day training workshop sponsored by the United Nations Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) at the Le Meridien Pegasus Hotel in Georgetown, is intended to address the balance between the Police prosecutor and defence lawyers. Marshall-Harris said some of the most serious drug traffickers get off scotch free because of legal technicalities used by defence lawyers. The Attorney-at-Law explained that the course is to enhance court room skills and teach trial strategy and techniques. She stressed that a main weapon in the defence armoury in drugs cases is the `no-case submission'. Defence lawyers are usually successful because no-case submissions are based on points of law and if the other side is not legally trained, it can easily be trampled with these technicalities, she said. The UNDCP workshop here follows another held in Belize. Marshall-Harris explained that Guyana and Belize have been selected as the first two training venues for a good reason - they are considered the front line states in the battle against drug trafficking in the region for obvious reasons. She pointed out that because of the geographical location, borders are difficult to police on the South American continent. This results in additional pressure on Belize and Guyana in terms of controlling the activities of drug traffickers, she said. Chancellor of the Judiciary, Mr. Cecil Kennard is to formally open the workshop today at the Le Meridien Pegasus. Marshall-Harris, based at the University of the West Indies (UWI) in Barbados, said the Georgetown session is one of many programmes run by the UNDCP. The 62 participants will be drawn from the Police forces of Guyana, Barbados, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Lucia, Dominica, Anguilla, Montserrat, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago and the British Virgin Islands. They will be coursed in areas of procedures which the Police prosecutor finds difficult to handle, the Project Coordinator said. "This is an advanced course...this is not a course which is intended for the prosecutor who knows nothing about trying a case, but has to be for those people who are already exposed to training," she said. Resource personnel are expected to spend about half a day training prosecutors to reply to no-case submissions and teaching them the points of law to defeat the kinds of submissions by defence counsel. Marshall-Harris said the current aspects of the UNDCP programme deal with legal training and is run in 18 beneficiary countries. The scheme is executed by the UNDCP and funded by the European Union with special financing from the British Government and the United States. Marshall-Harris noted that in the Caribbean, 90 per cent of drugs cases are heard in magistrate's courts and in the majority of these countries, the prosecutors are Police who are not trained. Consequently, they find themselves up against defence counsel who are usually quite experienced, and the Police are at a serious disadvantage in drugs cases, she said. Among the topics to be covered in the course starting today are statutory interpretation, case law, criminal law and procedure, mode of trial, bail, amendments, committals, examinations, sentence and forfeiture, establishing proof of an offence, presumptions, documentary evidence, interpreters, unavailability of exhibits and illegally obtained evidence. Resource personnel will include Justice Lennox Perry of Guyana; Justice Stanley Moore of Tortola; Attorney-at-Law, Mr. Dennis Morrison, Jamaica; Director of Public Prosecutions of Barbados, Mr. Charles Leacock; former Guyana Director of Public Prosecutions, Mr. Ian Chang; Director of Public Prosecutions of Guyana, Ms. Yonette Cummings; former Attorney General of Guyana, Mr. Bernard DeSantos; Attorney-at-Law, Mr. Latchman Kissoon, Barbados; Mr. Dean Cumberbatch, Deputy Dean and Senior Lecturer Faculty of Law, UWI, Barbados; Attorney-at-Law, Mr. Murrio Ducille of The Bahamas; Attorney-at-Law, Mr. Delroy Chuck of Jamaica and Attorney-at-Law, Ms. Susan Moore-Williams of Guyana. 
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