Court rulings should in principle be respected and not placed in doubt unnecessarily. Doing the latter especially without weighing all possible considerations is tricky at best and may undermine public confidence in the legal system on which every citizen depends for justice.
However, one can’t help but wonder sometimes about the sentencing. Case in point is the story in Friday’s paper of a squatter who got two weeks suspended for staying in a US resident’s house in St. Maarten without permission.
Mind you, the 44-year-old Frenchman spent an entire month living there for free. He was also alleged to have destroyed household goods, although this could not be sufficiently proven and perhaps for that reason there was no question of damages.
The culprit broke a window to gain unlawful access. That may sound relatively innocent, but it regards breaking and entering as well as trespassing and invading someone’s private property, plus making unauthorised use of their personal belongings.
While certainly less bad than a murder or robbery, these are nevertheless serious matters and it’s not that the judge went easy on this defendant, because the punishment was in keeping with the prosecution’s demand. Moreover, the suspect did not even show up and was tried in absentia.
One obvious argument is that the Pointe Blanche prison has already reached its full capacity, so locking up persons for relatively small offences makes little sense. On the other hand, what kind of message does that send not just locally but also abroad?
In this case it involves an apparently regular visitor who bought a vacation home to enjoy holidays in the destination. The minor consequences this squatter suffered for his wrongful act could be an unwelcome discouraging signal for other potential investors in real estate on the island.
