By Gerrino J. Saunders

Journal Staff Writer 

It appears as though receiving bail for some is almost akin to a death sentence, but the urge of human nature to be free and perhaps the desire to continue ones criminality compels many to apply for bail.

And while Attorney General Senator Ryan Pinder is pleased with the rate that the Department of Public Prosecutions success in the criminal courts in recent times, it appears that backlogs are resulting in undesirable individuals receiving.

While on the scene of a triple murder on Step Street in the Fox Hill community this week where police believe the intended target was a man on bail for murder, the commissioner of police Clayton Fernander lamented the fact that there are 178 men currently on bail for murder including any number of individuals who may have committed murder and have not been caught or tried.  He fears this could result in more retaliation murders. 

He said, “based on our intelligence, and I intend to address this, that if we don’t pay attention to a number of individuals that are on bail for murder, we have a 178 young men on bail who are being monitored for murder, and some other individuals that are not being monitored, so you can imagine the retaliation in there and if we don’t address that to get those individuals behind bars for their safety other people will die and we do not want incent persons to get caught up in that.”

Based on the 2023 statistics shared by the Royal Bahamas Police Force and presented to the media by Commissioner Fernander, 33 people were killed while on bail in 2023 and 25 of them were being electronically monitored. 

Additionally, 15 murder suspects were on bail at the time they committed murder in 2023, while 75 suspects were on bail when they committed another serious crime including some of them murder and attempted murder. 

In December of 2023 a man who was on bail accused of a 2020 murder told a Supreme Court Justice that someone shot at him while at his home days earlier and that he was afraid for his safety.  He made an emergency application to surrender his $30,000 bail and return to prison remand to protect himself and his family.   

Meanwhile, while debating the National Intelligence Agency Bill Attorney General Ryan Pinder said the Department of Public Prosecutions was doing a good job clearing a lot of the criminal cases that presented a back log. 

He noted that in 2023 some 162 criminal matters were disposed of and 44 of those matters were resolved as a result of a plea deal agreement with the accused.

This week Prime Minister Philip Davis also expressed his frustration with the number of men charged with murder suggesting that it could take many years for those cases to work their way through the court system. 

He said his administration will seek to do even more to reduce the back log in the criminal courts. He described the number of men on bail revealed by the police commissioner as “an overwhelming statistic”.

He said, “that’s only what is already in the system. Every so often, more are added to that number. The system can only accommodate so many. These trials are taking more than two and three months. So, we have 170 trials that are outstanding. What does that mean? That’s almost ten years to clean it up.”

The prime minister said part of the plan is to increase the number of judges in addition to changes in the law to help expedite criminal cases. 

He is also confident that their anti-crime initiatives will work once they begin to “take root”.