The closure of the police investigation into the murder of Asami Nagakiya raises too many questions and issues to be allowed to disappear into the past.
It is not enough for the Police Service simply to announce that its Cold Case Unit has determined that she was murdered by a man who was killed by the police in December 2016, and that its evidence has been seen and accepted by the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Even if the case were not a high-profile murder, as this certainly was, any decision to close a criminal case should be accompanied by a clear rationale.
The public should not be expected simply to accept the word of the police and DPP without question. To do so is to undermine the very foundation of the justice system built on open trials.
To quote the words of English philosopher/jurist Jeremy Bentham, “In the darkness of secrecy, sinister interest and evil in every shape have full swing... Where there is no publicity there is no justice. Publicity is the very soul of justice.”
The announcement of the closure of the case on March 18 was surprising because the initial investigation had focused on someone known to Asami. What eventually led the police to conclude she was killed by David Allen, an apparent stranger previously convicted of another murder, is a puzzle that should be pieced together for the public’s benefit by those who would have had to prove their case in court, had the suspect been alive.
If Allen did indeed murder Asami, then the entire justice system should be on trial for allowing a confessed and convicted killer to be out and free to kill again. To attorneys close to the case, Allen, a fraudster and killer, succeeded in fooling the justice system and beating it.
A profile of Allen by Express journalist Richard Charan describes a life of crime and cunning so deeply disturbing that it is hard to escape the view that Allen was a mentally damaged individual with psychopathic tendencies.
When, at age 18, he robbed and killed TSTT engineer Darryl Baksh outside a nightclub, he had disguised himself as a vagrant on a pavement cardboard bed, easily tricking any passer-by into thinking he was a harmless, homeless man. When caught and charged, he presented himself as everything required to seduce the court—a youthful, tearful, remorseful first offender, eager to cooperate and plead to the lesser charge of manslaughter, thereby sparing himself a jury trial.
As pointed out by Charan, the four-year jail sentence given to Allen by Justice Mark Mohammed was less than what some get for trafficking marijuana. In jail, he was a model prisoner who signed up for courses and so impressed and won over his probation officer that he was released in four and a half years—free, as the police have now concluded, to kill Asami Nagakiya.
If their conclusion is correct, David Allen was a textbook case in how to con the system and should be required study for everyone in the justice system—from judges, down.
