Let it end with Samantha

The decision by the Attorney General not to appeal the decision of the courts in a case that found the state to have infringed the rights of a murdered woman and her family was a formal acknowledgement that the government must take the consequences of domestic violence and partner abuse seriously.

In December 2017, Samantha Isaacs went to a friend’s birthday party. Her abusive boyfriend, Kahriym Garcia showed up at the event. Things did not go well.

When Isaacs was dropped home after the party, Garcia surprised her, shot her in the foot and put her in the trunk of a car. She managed to escape from the vehicle, so Garcia stopped and shot her in the face.

Before dying of her injuries, Isaacs identified her killer to the police.

Officers would not bring her killer to justice. On their way to question him, the police heard a gunshot from the suspect’s home and found him dead.

Isaacs’ mother, Tot Lambkin, did not settle for that self-inflicted justice.

Lambkin turned her grief and anger over her daughter’s murder to purpose.

With Garcia gone, she turned to the justice system.

In May, Justice Robin Mohammed ruled in a 110-page judgment that the inaction of the police and the judiciary had infringed Isaacs’ right to protection and respect for private and family life under the law.

The case turned on the courage that Isaacs displayed in reporting multiple domestic violence incidents to the police. Four times she went to the police, but no investigations or inquiries were done.

One magistrate denied a protection order request because she believed the order was intended to fast-track a maintenance application.

In his defence of the state apparatus, senior counsel Fyard Hosein argued that the authorities knew of no “real and immediate risks.”

During one rare police intervention, Garcia cursed the officers and made threats to Isaacs and her family in their presence.

Responding to Justice Mohammed’s ruling, former Coalition Against Domestic Violence president Roberta Clarke, who assisted Lambkin, described the judgment as an important legal precedent.

“It outlines, for the first time, the legal responsibility of the state to act effectively to protect victims,” she said.

That precedent is important because it gives legal footing for victims to hold the state to account for its duty to protect.

It also served notice to officers and the justice system that not only can their jobs make a difference between life and death, but they can also be called to account for executing that duty.

In choosing not to contest the ruling, the state accepted the scope and reality of that responsibility.

Nothing will bring her child back to Lambkin or return Isaacs to her son, but let the era of official carelessness and inattention in domestic incidents end with her murder.

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