New court house urgent, CJ warns

| 15/01/2015 | 0 Comments
Cayman News Service

Grand Court Opening , 14 January 2015

(CNS): The “chronic lack of space” in Cayman’s courthouse, despite spreading into various nearby office space, is undermining the ability of judiciary to deal with the increasing caseload. At the official Grand Court opening on Wednesday, Chief Justice Anthony Smellie warned that the obligation for timely justice was at risk because of the lack of appropriate courts for criminal cases. However, he said that Cabinet had given its approval to start the process of sourcing new court facilities.

He said the first meeting of the project committee was held on Monday but the country’s top judge said it would not be until next year’s court opening that he may be able to talk about a new courthouse in “concrete terms”. The impact of the space problem was illustrated by the continued drop in caseload disposal rates.

“We again failed to meet the benchmarks for rates of disposal, which we regularly met until a few years ago when the intake of serious indictments increased sharply,” the chief justice said.

He pointed out that the state has a constitutional obligation to provide a timely trial and the trend of not reaching a conclusion in so many cases could not be allowed to continue.

“To reinforce the importance of Cabinet’s recent decision, I again emphasise that there is simply no hope of reversing the trend without more courtrooms suitable for the trial of these cases. Given the logistical and security issues attendant upon these cases, there are still only two suitable courtrooms,” he stated.  “Given the daily needs of the Summary Court for dealing with the intake of these case and the many other less serious criminal cases, in actuality we have available only a single courtroom for the trial of indictments.”

Reviewing the reality of the numbers, he said that as of 31 December there were 118 criminal cases awaiting trial. He said that 109 new indictments were added to the previous year’s backlog during 2014. While 115 cases were completed, including 40 from 2014, 75 criminal cases were carried over.

As a result, there are 118 indictments pending, one of which goes back to 2009, five years from the point that the person was charged, and a further seven from 2010 and five from 2011. With ten carried over from 2012 and another 20 from 2013, the delay in justice for some defendants is a serious human rights issue.

The chief justice said inroads had been made into the backlog of cases in Summary Court as a result of additional prosecutorial staff being dedicated to the lower court cases and what he described as “the vigorous engagement of the acting magistrates”, while the chief magistrate and permanent team tackle the current cases.

While space is at the top of the list when it comes to dealing with the caseload, there are other issues adding to the delays, including what Chief Justice Smellie described as “the perennial concern” over legal aid.

A legal ruling by Justice Alex Henderson last year recognised the right to legal advice of defendants in custody pending police investigations but the limited legal aid budget. Many attorneys doing criminal defence work, usually paid for via legal aid, have raised concerns that there is insufficient funds to pay them to meet the new obligation and many have been attending the police station pro bono.

During his address to the court Wednesday, however, the top judge said government had responded with an addition to the legal aid budget. He also said that the new legal aid bill, which is now being considered, would formalise Justice Henderson’s ruling. But in the meantime a temporary scheme has been established to ensure those in custody pending investigations will get legal representation.

The judge also noted that the judiciary has exchanged extensive comments on the Legal Aid Bill with the director of the Law Reform Commission and he was encouraged that things are moving forward to the approval of Cabinet and passage of the new law early this year.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Tags: ,

Category: Courts, Crime

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.