By LAMECH JOHNSON

Tribune Staff Reporter

ljohnson@tribunemedia.net

“HOW can someone just get a nolle?” is the question Free National Movement deputy leader Loretta Butler-Turner put to parliamentarians yesterday.

Addressing the sentencing guidelines in the use of firearms under the Firearms Amendment Bill, the MP for Long Island was concerned about the messages that might have been sent to the public as a consequence of the court’s controversial discontinuation of a gun case that was recently near completion in the Magistrate’s Court.

While Mrs Butler-Turner expressed “general” support for the crime bills, she noted concern that “we’re actually lowering the period we’re going to put criminals in jail for, or giving the discretion to lower it from five years.”

“Fair enough if they want to lower it, I think it’s a significant amount of time that they’re taking off the low end,” she said.

While seeking a response from the government for clarification on sentencing for firearms, Mrs Butler-Turner also noted that “in battling crime, we must also address the mindsets which do not aide our fight. We need to be careful about the messages that we send.”

“And you know, the question in fact that must be asked with that nolle that’s been referred to in this place many times, was in fact the entire cabinet aware of it?”

“Or was this something that was just done as, you know, a person sitting in as the acting Attorney General?”

“How certain are we that something like this may not, in fact, happen again? That is a very real question. People are asking ‘Well you know I have a gun’ or ‘My son had a gun and they gone to jail, they put him in jail for 20 years. Well how can someone just get a nolle?’”

The “nolle” referred to yesterday involved George and Janice Hayles who each faced a charge of possession of a firearm and ammunition, after police said they were found with a .380 pistol and 19 live rounds for the weapon.

The accused, represented by Allyson Maynard-Gibson before her appointment as Attorney General, pleaded not guilty to the charges at their arraignment days after their arrest in 2010.

The discontinuation of the charges took place last year on Friday, December 28.

The document bore Education Minister Jerome Fitzgerald’s signature because Mrs Maynard-Gibson was out of the country at the time. He was delegated to act on her behalf.

Not long after the charges were dropped, Mr Fitzgerald issued a statement saying he was satisfied that grounds existed for his decision. He said he did so because it was a matter of national security. The court entered a nolle prosequi, which meant that the prosecution against the couple on the gun charge was to be dropped.

Mr Fitzgerald pointed to articles in the Constitution that granted the Attorney General power to “discontinue at any stage, before judgment is delivered, any criminal proceedings” in defending himself against criticisms from the public and the Opposition.