Samuels-Brown - Photo by Daraine Luton
Daraine Luton, Staff Reporter
IF YOU should look closely at Jacqueline Samuels-Brown, you may recognise that her right eye is slightly smaller than her left.
She was not born like that; it is a scar that bears testimony of her 27 years of devoted service to the field of justice in Jamaica.
Six years ago, while representing police officers dragged before a commission of inquiry set up to examine the circumstances surrounding the deaths of 27 people during a joint police/military operation in West Kingston, Mrs. Samuels-Brown met in a motor vehicle accident and sustained serious damage to the eye.
"That was not going to keep me away. I had a duty to my clients and I was going to discharge my responsibility. Nothing was going to keep me away," she told The Gleaner, adding that because of the injury, she wore dark glasses to the inquiry.
In the end, the police officers whom she represented were not charged as the inquiry found no one criminally responsible for the deaths.
A different kind of dedication
It is this kind of dedication which has earned her the respect of her peers as a top attorney-at-law.
Public Defender Earl Witter describes Mrs. Samuels-Brown as being "diligent, astute and skilled".
According to prominent attorney-at-law Christopher Townsend, "she is not merely a lawyer, but an artist", and Tom Tavares-Finson says she is a fabulous attorney who should have already been made Queen's Counsel.
But, just who is this Jacqueline Samuels-Brown whose name seems to come up whenever there is a 'big' court case?
From behind a rectangular wooden desk adorned with a glass top, Mrs. Samuels-Brown shared her story - a story which confirmed her to be a perfect choice for The Gleaner's 'Women in Charge' feature.
A woman who now successfully charts careers in both education and law, she tutors at the Norman Manley Law School at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona campus, and is fantastic at both criminal and civil law.
Interestingly, though, if Mrs. Samuels-Brown had stuck solely to her initial dream, the praises would only have come from a school choir. Law was not what she wanted as a child; it was teaching. At the age of 18, she had already taken the biggest step towards that feat by enrolling for an English degree at the UWI.
Looking for a challenge
However, first-year English was too easy and so Mrs. Samuels-Brown decided to join her elder brother, Bert, in the law faculty. Before university, however, Mrs. Samuels-Brown, at age 16, left her parents' house in Kingston to become a teacher at the Happy Grove High School in Portland, where she taught for one year.
"English was lovely, but it was too much like sixth form," she told The Gleaner.
"I found linguistics a challenge and for years after I became a lawyer, I wondered if I had done the right thing, if I should not have stuck with and specialise in linguistics, but I guess law grew on me and I grew into law and we grew together," she added.
It was Bert Samuels who moved for Mrs. Samuels-Brown's admission to the bar and she remembers it as if it were yesterday.
Election fire
"It was October 28, 1980, two days before the general elections. I remember the date because the election was on the 30th and they were making sure we were admitted to practice before the election because there was a lot of apprehension as to the turbulence which could accompany and perhaps follow the elections."
In the run-up to the 1980 election, the People's National Party and the Jamaica Labour Party were involved in a bitter fight for power and supporters of both parties exchanged bullets across the political divide to make 1980 the bloodiest election yet. But while Mrs. Samuels-Brown would have seen that bloody election playing out, it was not until 1983 that her practice would take her close to messy politics.
A rookie out of the Freedom Chambers, Mrs. Samuels-Brown was an ideal attorney to fish around in Grenada during the time of the American invasion. She went to the Caribbean island to investigate and represent the 17 persons charged following the death of Grenada's Prime Minister Maurice Bishop.
Bernard Coard, a Grenadian, his Jamaican wife Phyllis, and 15 other former government ministers and members of the military were accused of the execution-style murder of Bishop and several others in 1983.
Mrs. Samuels-Brown, who had been retained by the brother of Coard, was the first Jamaican attorney to enter the country during that time.
"I guess my youthfulness and innocent look was disarming," she told The Gleaner, while smiling from her cosy office chair.
Grenada then, she says, felt like a military zone. "When you got out of the airport, all you could see was United States army tanks and the streets were lined with soldiers behind sand bags," recalls Mrs. Samuels-Brown of what she called her baptism of fire.
Well-established
Attorney-at-law, Jacqueline Samuels-Brown (centre), K. Churchill Nieta, Q.C. (left), with their clients Senior Superintendent of Police Reneto Adams (right), and other members of the disbanded Crime Management Unit, walking along Barry Street to the Supreme Court, downtown Kingston, for the start of the Kraal murder trial on October 31, 2005. - Norman Grindley/Deputy Chief Photographer
She has done the rounds as far as chambers are concerned. Immediately after being called to the bar, she joined the Freedom Chambers where senior attorneys Dennis Daley, Richard Small, Dennis Morrison, Roy Fairclough and Delano Harrison provided guidance. After it was dissolved, she set up practice with a few young members of the old freedom chambers before moving on to share office with Hugh and Richard Small. She then left and shared chambers with the veteran Ian Ramsay, Q.C., then with Arlene Harrison-Henry and Donna Scott-Motley, before establishing her own practice.
Today, Mrs. Samuels-Brown is the owner of the law company, Firm Law, situated at the corner of Duke and Barry streets in downtown Kingston. Mrs. Samuels-Brown is one of the few female attorneys to successfully practise at both the criminal and civil bars. Many persons, however, know her for her work at the criminal bar. Not many know that she is one of Jamaica's foremost authorities on constitutional law.
Mr. Townsend says Mrs. Samuels-Brown is oblivious as it relates to her talent, and added that "her equal is difficult to find".
"She is a woman who has made it in what is seen as a man's world. She has not just made it, but she has led the profession," said Mr. Townsend.
Mrs. Samuels-Brown says while at times it is challenging working as a woman in a profession once seen as male territory, the time has come for society to abandon its gender spectacles.
"There are so many other social challenges facing he society which are greater than being a woman," she said.
Time for women
"This is a fantastic time to be a woman. It is true that old prejudices remain, but at this time, women have the option of being women in the traditional sense or being women in the new, ground-breaking sense."
She continued: "I feel concerned particularly for young men whom I think are at risk and who I do not think the society sufficiently takes into account in terms of considering their special position.
"In the criminal courts you see hordes and hordes of young men and you wonder why they were not reached before."
Ms. Samuels-Brown is more than qualified to speak here as she has represented many 'misguided' young men, whom members of society have deemed criminal and have attempted to demonise attorneys for representing.
People normally ask why lawyers represent 'known' criminals and it is something The Gleaner could not resist asking and a question Mrs. Samuels-Brown has answered time and time again.
"What about the other side of the coin. How does defence counsel feel when a client, who defence counsel feels is innocent, is convicted? And how does a prosecution counsel feel when a person who is accused of a crime is convicted and there is a fair chance that that person is, in moral terms, innocent of the charge."
"I understand law to transcend the individual person who is before the court ... The individual person charged is merely the vehicle to which the law is developed for the protection of the 99,000 other innocent persons who may one day go before the court and if established principles are not applied consistently, they the innocent ones will fall by the wayside and will be regarded and treated as guilty."
