Director of Public Prosecution (DPP), Oris Sullivan issued a nolle prosequi in a case, ending what court observers described was more of persecution than prosecution, of an assault charge against Mr. Alvin Martin, an industrial art – technical teacher at the Montserrat Secondary School, after a two-year wait. DPP claimed he had enough evidence to successfully convict Mr. Martin. However out of a sense of generosity, the prosecution is ending the case.
Long standing defense counsel Mr. David Brandt argued that according to law, the case should have been concluded within a six-month period and suggested that the case was without merit in the first place. The student in question the attorney argued did not side with the prosecution. In fact according to him he was declared a ‘hostile’ witness by the prosecution as the student maintained in court that Mr. Martin did not bite him on his lip as claimed.
Student witnesses on the spot at the time of the incident also denied the prosecution’s claim.
ZJB News reporting on the matter said that Mr. Martin reported that the incident was grossly and maybe intentionally exaggerated by the school’s administration. No one at the school or the Ministry discussed the student-teacher contact with him before he was arrested and suspended from his job. “The fact is,” he says, “Ministry officials did not entertain him when he made requests to present his side of the story.” Martin accordingly said that a key Ministry official told him: “I have already heard the Principal’s version of the story,” and dismissed him.
Last year, another male teacher at the MSS was acquitted of assault in a matter we reported, should never have seen the courts. The concern for the public in such matters is the fall out that can result from matters of such nature and the cost to the public purse to be paying out monies, for no service as well as replacement teachers.
