IT IS a legal requirement that has all the implications that can lead to the escape of a felon; here I make mention of these identification parades.
The law stipulates that when a crime is committed and the perpetrator escapes, then the burden of proof, that is, to identify the said perpetrator, lies with the aggrieved party.
Here is where the law is sometimes called “an ass”, because it is very tricky business when you are called upon to identify someone whom you have seen only once. In many cases, the sighting of that individual was a mere glance under circumstances that were for the most part traumatic.
Try to imagine the situation where your attacker was mercilessly beating you on the head and you were there desperately trying to ward off the blows. After all of that you are then asked to identify that individual in an identification parade of his/her peers?
Note well, that was your first time seeing the individual under circumstances that were most undesirable: if the law is not an ass, then what is? But this is what the law requires. In the matter involving former Assistant Police Commissioner Clinton Conway and a Kaieteur News pressman, this very fact raises its ugly head. In that matter, the former commissioner’s home was invaded by armed gunmen, when, in the ensuing scuffle, one of the burglars’ ID card accidentally fell at the scene of the robbery.
Now, this is firm proof that the pressman was a member of the home invasion team; nevertheless, the law requires that the homeowner positively identify the attacker. The reason for this is that the law wants the right individual prosecuted for the crime and not the “innocent party.”
What happened next is what we all feared: Mr. Conway identified the wrong person, which means that the pressman is automatically a free man. He is now rejoicing that he is free under a technicality in the law. He might well be celebrating under the expressed thought that Mr. Conway is a madman who was out to frame “an innocent” pressman.
Mr. Conway, from what I know of him, is not one to suffer from senility, nor is he a collector of identification cards. But, like I said, this is another case where a criminal has gotten away with a heinous crime, all on a technicality.
Failure to identify a felon is no reason for the perpetrator/s to celebrate, as I have indicated above. But this is the sad reality of this whole identification parade business. In many instances it is an easy way of escape for a criminal.
Neil Adams