In a piece published today, online columnist Godfrey Smith called the theft charges against Said Musa and Ralph Fonseca, “the juice and biscuits trial.” And he got that description from the DPP herself, who employed a mind-bending metaphor to explain why the charge of theft was appropriate in this case.
One week ago – she compared the alleged theft of the US$10 million to making off with juice money and she did so using the names of the media workers who were interviewing her. From the perspective of sheer entertainment, most we spoke to enjoyed her performance – but we confess that after outlining the maze of names and transactions, we were still left shaking our heads.
So, prodded by the “juice and biscuits” piece, we figured that we would try and de-mystify the allegory, untangle the metaphor and deconstruct this modern fable of executive larceny. We did so by assigning proper names and meanings to all her substitute terms – and it came out something like an annotated version of the DPP’s first gospel on Said and Ralph. In keeping with her informal approach, we have used only the first names – let’s see if this makes it any clearer.
Cheryl-Lynn Branker-Taitt, Director of Public Prosecutions
“Let’s just say that you’re out here, you’re working very hard, and you’re very thirsty. This gentleman and I, acting on your behalf, we know Rowland has a lot of money so we go to him and we say Rowland Jules is really thirsty, you think you can help him get something to drink and he says okay, no problem.
He says he’ll give you $4 to buy two Caribbean Pride Orange Juice for Jules, come see me later and I’ll give you the money and you say okay
sure, we’ll send someone to get it. Then we start to talk and we say, he says he is going to give $4 for Jules, we’ll take $2, we’ll buy one Caribbean Pride for Jules and the other $2, remember those Shirley biscuits we bought last week, Jules didn’t know about those Shirley biscuits, he never got eat any of them, he doesn’t even like Shirley biscuits, but we went and we bought them and now we have to pay for them. We will take two of those dollars and we will go pay for them.
So we approach Marion, poor Marion, none the wiser, and we say Marion go to Rowland this afternoon, tell him you’re there to pick up the $4, he will send $2 to Jules and the $2 you will send to the shopkeeper down the street and she says okay, no problem. The afternoon she goes to Rowland and says I am here to pick up the $4 and she says sure no problem, here is the $4 and I want you to sign this, you’re going to bring back the receipt showing you bought the two Caribbean Pride Orange Juices. If Jules doesn’t buy them today, I want 25 cents for every day he keeps my $4 and he doesn’t buy the Caribbean Pride orange juices. So she says well what’s all this, I just came here to get $4.
So she calls him and she asks what’s all this about, you just told me to come here and pick up $4 and he says listen, I said to you, you get those $4, you send $2 to Jules and the other $2 you send to the shopkeeper, that is what I said and that is what you must do, sign anything you have to sign and she says okay. She signs, she gets the $4 and she does what she has to do. I have of course deceived you because you get your $2, you buy your orange juice and it is 100% pure orange juice so it quenches your thirst.
In a few hours you are thirsty again and you don’t even know about another $2 that you could have bought your orange juice with, so I have deceived you. I don’t intend for you to ever get that $2 back because I’ve paid off my debt for my Shirley biscuit with the shopkeeper. That property didn’t belong to me, it was given on your behalf for you to do something with it. Haven’t I acted as though the money was mine and that is what theft is about, appropriation?
I’ve done it because I’ve given the directive. When Marion came to talk to him, he also gave the directive, you go ahead and this is what you do with this money. He is acting as though it is his as well. So couldn’t we both have been charged and didn’t we do separate things so we can be charged separately? Who is to say that the prosecution must take us both to court at the same time. Do you understand?”
Well, the jury’s still out on that one.
