RESISTING pressure from criminal elements cost Achilles Charles the ultimate price on Saturday night – his life.
He was “an incredible young man” with great potential and who genuinely wanted to improve his life, his legal team said yesterday.
“It would be a mistake to assume that he was just another ‘bad guy’ who was on the wrong side of the law. Truth be told, he did everything humanly possible to stay away from a life of crime and paid the ultimate price for resisting pressure from criminal elements,” lawyers Anand Ramlogan SC, Ganesh Saroop and Jayanti Lutchmedial said in a joint statement.
“The culture of criminality has permeated and engulfed some communities to such an extent that the stark reality is that young people are faced with only two choices: submit and join criminal gangs or be a dead example to others who hesitate, ” said the lawyers.
They said painting Charles with a broad brush of criminality was the easiest option for many. The association of him, the murder victim, with the murderer is a coping mechanism that allows others to continue with normal lives and not face the callous indifference and lack of social reaction to the crime.
“Psychologically, we put a distance between ‘us’ and ‘them’ and this excuses the lack of outrage and outrage that our consciences must feel when people are killed with impunity every day,” they wrote.
“It’s easier if we just say ‘he was probably involved in some gang,’ or we assume he was involved in some wrongdoing and ‘that’s why it happened.’ That kind of justification enables the ‘it won’t happen to me’ mentality ‘, which is comforting to the common citizen,” they added.
It was noted that Charles had no criminal convictions and was acquitted of the murder charge in 2019, as there was no evidence against him.
“He was robbed of nine years of his life in prison awaiting his day in court. His desire to be an advocate for change within the criminal justice system earned him both positive and negative attention.
“Coming after the Privy Council’s decision in favor of Achilles, it is natural for people to wonder if the killing of Achilles had anything to do with his success at court.
“If it happened, it is a vicious and vicious attack on the justice system itself as it shows that unpopular trials can bring social revenge. Such behavior is a threat to the rule of law and undermines the legal system,” the statement said.
The lawyers said that if this is where we have come as a society, then Trinidad and Tobago is not just a failed state, but a decaying state that refuses to face the “raw and ugly reality around us as we slide deeper and deeper into the abyss social. and the coma that defines our present existence”.
This is not a case of a family saying he was a “good guy” when he really wasn’t. Charles, they noted, was a decent, humble, gentle and respectful person with a lot of ambition.
“His killing is a sad reflection of the growing reality for young people that no good should be allowed to flourish in the midst of evil. His death should spark national outrage and outrage, but it won’t.
“Until we face the reason for this, we can never truly progress as a society. After all, we are conditioned to believe that there is no such thing as a decent, innocent youth from certain communities, and we are encouraged to treat them with the presumption of guilt rather than innocence.
“Achilles fought to make a change in the system to fight that injustice and that was his contribution to building a fairer and more just society.
“May his soul rest in peace,” they said.
