Lawyers defend Firearms Act protest

DEFENCE attorney Peter Champagnie, King’s Counsel (KC) on Monday pushed back at suggestions that last week’s protests by lawyers about the 2022 Firearms Act were underpinned by financial motives and political affiliations. “This meeting and this gathering, in some instances, has taken on a political flavour; it is not about JLP (Jamaica Labour Party), PNP (People’s National Party) or any P for that matter; it is about justice and fairness and that is why we are here,” he said during a news conference called by the Jamaican Bar Association as lawyers upheld a pledge to withdraw their services from all criminal courts islandwide in continuation of their push for amendments to the Firearms Prohibition Restriction and Regulation Act 2022. “We are not here to say we want more cases to be tried so we can get more money and fees, and all that; it doesn’t work like that.

The canons of the profession that guide us say that we have a right and an obligation to make recommendations for the improvement of the law, modernisation, and our contribution is in this vein,” Champagnie declared. Pointing out that judges, prosecutors, and defence practitioners are at one in highlighting the flaws in the legislation, Champagnie emphasised that the Act was intended to prosecute criminals bent on carrying out heinous crimes and not individuals found in unwitting possession of ammunition or weapons. attorneys not seeking to downplay the seriousness of gun crimes and those involved in criminality “We are here, not to be perceived — as it is being bandied about — as wanting rights for gunmen or that we are PNP lawyers.

Nothing could be further from the truth. We are lawyers and we are officers of the court... it equally cannot be right, as far as imitation firearms are concerned, circumstances where imitation firearms were never used in the commission of any crime; circumstances where individuals did not even remember that the items were in their surroundings [for such individuals to find themselves subjected to a 15-year at hard labour minimum mandatory sentence]” Champagnie contended.

“What we are asking for, as far as the statutory minimum mandatory is concerned, is to allow the judge to have a discretion to impose a sentence less than that in exceptional circumstances,” he said. “What obtains now is a long road where, if the judge is of the view that it warrants less th…