EDITORIAL - Lessons from the Stephen Lawrence case

This week's conviction in London of Gary Dobson and David Norris in the celebrated Stephen Lawrence murder case of 18 years ago has lessons for Jamaica, beyond the fact that Lawrence's parents are from Jamaica and that he was buried in this island.

It is a vindication of perseverance by the Lawrence family and of the use of science in identifying criminals and of the appropriate advance of legislation to facilitate the delivery of justice. The last two points are worthy of significant notice by the Jamaican authorities.

In August 1993, Lawrence, a black 18-year-old, was at a London bus stop with Duwayne Brooks when he was attacked and stabbed to death by a group of white young men.

Public anger at the ineptitude of the investigators probing the case led to a public inquiry by Justice William Macpherson, who concluded that the London Metropolitan Police were "institutionally racist". Macpherson's 1999 decision caused not only a review of the Met but a change, in 2005, to Britain's double-jeopardy law, allowing the retrial of persons for a crime of which they were previously acquitted, in the face of compelling new evidence.

After Stephen Lawrence's murder, both the police and prosecutors held that there was insufficient evidence on which to try any of the suspects. In 1996, however, Doreen and Neville Lawrence, Stephen's parents, started a private prosecution against five suspects, including the two who were convicted this week. The case collapsed.

By the mid-2000s, though, DNA/forensic technology had advanced sufficiently for a tiny speck of blood that had soaked into the fabric of a jacket earlier seized from Dobson to match Lawrence's profile. Textile fibres found a cardigan taken from Dobson's home also matched clothing worn by Lawrence at the time of his murder. Similar fibres were also taken from clothing taken from Norris.

It was on the basis of this new evidence, and using the revision to the double-jeopardy law, that Dobson's 1996 acquittal was overturned and a new murder charge brought against him, as well as against Norris.

In Jamaica, there are more than 1,000 murders annually. Not much more than 30 per cent of these are cleared up by the police merely by identifying suspects. Few are ever prosecuted. Even fewer convictions are achieved, for want of stickable evidence.

We can learn from others

The Stephen Lawrence case highlights what is possible with the use of science and technology by law enforcement. Given Jamaica's high rate of violent crime and its debilitating effect on the country's economy, investment in forensic technology and the modernisation of the constabulary must be among the priorities of the new administration. Jamaica can leapfrog to the front of the technological advance.

It is, for instance, a travesty that more than a year and half since the Tivoli Gardens operation, in which more than 70 persons died, the police are unable to complete the forensic testing of weapons fired by the security forces. Similarly bad is the failure to determine, or say, which soldiers fired guns during the operation that killed accountant Keith Clarke.

We do not support a general right of appeal by prosecutors of persons acquitted of crimes. However, the establishment of a suitable bar for appeals, similar to what has been done in Britain, could also help to dampen an impulse towards impunity by criminals.