Members of the St Andrew Lay Magistrates' Association have received crucial instructions regarding controversial legal duties they are often called upon to exercise.

Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions, Jeremy Taylor, ensured that the issues of bail, search warrants, identification parades and criminal confessions were at the top of the agenda at the first quarterly meeting of the St Andrew Justice of the Peace and Lay Magistrates' Association, at the Medallion Hall Hotel on the weekend.

There was a tinge of comedy interspersed with the weighty legal duties when Taylor reported that bleaching has been used in recent times to compromise the success of identification parades.

Bleaching criminal

"Nowadays we're discovering that bleaching is another very important consideration because he might commit the crime when he has been bleached, but by the time he gets scraped up by the police his colour has changed, and he is saying "but a nuh me, see the statement there. It say is a brown man, but look pon me - I'm black as pitch"'.

Another notable point of Taylor's address was the risk JPs should consider when authorising a surety on a bail application. Taylor warned the JPs that if they do not factually know where the prospective surety lives, and if they cannot personally attest to that person's good character, they should not validate that person's request.

"When you're saying that you approve the person, you ought to know the person. This type of thing with the person just walking off the road and you sign the bail form, you're not to do it, because you will go and get yourselves in problem!" Taylor warned.

Taylor further said that the punishment for knowingly making a statement that is false in any material manner is punishable by a fine of $3 million or two years' imprisonment, or both. In addition, the JP would be liable to be charged for using an official seal for an unlawful purpose in contrary to section 9 of the Justices of the Peace Official Seal act.