Milo Milfort
Port-au-Prince, March 5. The Legal Medical Institute (IML, for its acronym in French), the only institution in charge of performing autopsies at the service of Justice in Haiti, is approaching two years without operating due to the lack of budget and specialized equipment.
In Haiti, regarding criminal and homicide cases, in order for Justice to investigate correctly and make an objective decision, a forensic investigation is required.
“Criminal justice cannot function without forensic medicine. Whoever the criminal is, he or she will go free if the court does not have clear information that shows that this person is not only dead, but also who killed them,” said the director of the institute, Jean Armel Demorcy, in statements to EFE.
However, that institution has actually ceased to exist for almost two years, due to the total indifference of the state authorities.
AT THE SERVICE OF A JUSTICE THAT SERVES NO ONE
“In 20 years of periodic autopsies, justice has never called me to ask what I have found,” said Demorcy, who points out that since the body was created there has only been one trial in which the institute has been used. And it wasn’t even the courts, but women’s organizations.
For 11 million Haitians, there are only two medical examiners. One lives in Haiti. The other person is a doctor who lives between Haiti and the United States after escaping a kidnapping attempt in the Caribbean nation.
In 20 years, between 2,000 and 3,000 autopsies have been performed. The last emblematic case treated by the institute before it fell into disrepair was the autopsy of the Haitian president, Jovenel Moise, assassinated in his private residence in July 2021.
FUNDAMENTAL TOOL FOR JUSTICE
Society is a little ahead of the State on this issue. Rarely does the Prosecutor’s Office, through an Investigating Judge, demand an autopsy in the framework of an investigation that he is carrying out, criticized the expert.
This causes a great impact among the population, because there are many cases of suspicious deaths. People (affected) call you, but can’t find the answer they need, because there’s no autopsy, Demorcy said.
“So, it is the reign of impunity because you cannot give explanations to the people. This reflects a total dysfunction of the judicial system, which cannot play its role,” he said.
However, under Haitian law, in any case of suspicious or violent death, an autopsy is necessary to determine the causes and circumstances.
In the Haitian mentality, no death is natural. Hence the importance of a tool such as the Medical Legal Institute.
“Someone who has died suspiciously or violently should not be buried without an autopsy,” Demorcy said, calling the overwhelming majority of cases of people who have died suspiciously or violently buried without an autopsy a flagrant violation of the law.
FORENSIC MEDICINE CEASE TO EXIST
“This means that the State does not exist. This is one of the opportunities that the State has to manifest itself. This is to guarantee social order. Otherwise, it is the kingdom of impunity, it is the kingdom of reckoning,” he lamented.
He warned, by way of example, that “when your family is killed and the State cannot guarantee the clarification of the circumstances to convict the aggressor, when you know the aggressor, revenge seems inevitable.”
Without a laboratory, without personnel, without material and without a budget, forensic medicine in Haiti is collapsed. The consequences of its non-existence are investigations that continue indefinitely and the lengthy preventive detention that has dominated the Haitian judicial system for at least two decades.
From 2002 to today, barely two employees have been appointed. A secretary and an administrator. The rest of the technical staff who are expected to run the forensic institute are never the purview of the state.
A TOTALLY DYSFUNCTIONAL INSTITUTE
“The last straw came at the end of 2021, the institute is in a totally dysfunctional situation,” Demorcy said. The last money received from the Ministry of Justice was in 2021. After that, nothing.
In 2012, the criminal investigation body was endowed with a legal framework by means of a decree that places it under the responsibility of the Ministry of Justice, which must guarantee its operation, including providing it with material, and the Ministry of Public Health, which must appoint your personal.
Despite requests for staff increases, it has never been done. For this reason, in 2021 it was found that the institute was no longer working. “We no longer perform autopsies. We are totally dysfunctional. At this time we cannot perform any expertise,” Demorcy said. EFE
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