Tread Cautiously With Five-Year Cases, Warns DPP

Recently the Minister of Justice Delroy Chuck immediately upon taking office suggested rather stridently that cases on the Circuit court docket not decided after five years be tossed from the docket.

As a for­mer law-enforce­ment offi­cer who under­stand some of the cir­cum­stances which some­times con­tribute to these delays, includ­ing defense maneu­ver­ing, I was shocked that the Minister would ven­ture to sug­gest this. To sug­gest dis­card­ing cas­es on the cri­te­ria of time opens up the process to more manip­u­la­tion and abuse by defense attor­neys while fur­ther vic­tim­iz­ing the fam­i­lies and vic­tims of crime.
Clearly the min­is­ter did not think through the con­se­quences of his suggestion/​order before he opened his mouth or he sim­ply does not care about vic­tims of heinous crimes.

IS DELROY CHUCK KING?

I was moved to respond to the min­is­ter’s posi­tion in an arti­cle I wrote on the sub­ject. It is inter­est­ing also that the Director of Public Prosecution is now push­ing back on this sug­ges­tion as well.
Now there needs to be sig­nif­i­cant changes in the way seri­ous cas­es are approached, least among which is expe­di­en­cy of dis­po­si­tion. However it can­not be approached by way of a fiat on the part of a sin­gle minister.
The crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem in Jamaica is in seri­ous cri­sis that has to be con­sid­ered when we con­sid­er how we approach the dis­po­si­tion of seri­ous cases.
It must be the last option , if at all that we con­sid­er allow­ing mur­der­ers and oth­er seri­ous felons to walk free sim­ply because the sys­tem is inca­pable of dis­pens­ing jus­tice or worse, because a crim­i­nal cod­dling politi­cian say so.

Nearly a quar­ter of the more than 500 cas­es before the Home Circuit Court could be tossed out if a call by Justice Minister Delroy Chuck for judges to dis­miss crim­i­nal cas­es that have been in the sys­tem for a min­i­mum of five years is heed­ed. There were 522 cas­es on the court list at the start of the Hilary term in January, and, accord­ing to Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Paula Llewellyn, 127 of them are five years or old­er — all mur­der cases.

Llewellyn, who was speak­ing at the start of the Easter term yes­ter­day, said 96 of these cas­es are down for tri­al dur­ing this term and that her office is ready to pro­ceed with 51. Her dis­clo­sure comes days after Chuck called for judges to dis­miss cas­es that have been before the courts for five years or more by the end of this year.

The min­is­ter argued that the cas­es should be dis­missed unless there are rea­son­able grounds to con­tin­ue with the pros­e­cu­tion, sug­gest­ing that it was unfair for an accused per­son to go to court for five years hop­ing to prove his inno­cence. It was one of sev­er­al mea­sures that are aimed at reduc­ing the huge back­log of cas­es that have swamped the judi­cial system.

ABSOLUTE RULE

According to Llewellyn, 526 cas­es are on the Circuit Court list for this Easter term. That num­ber includes the 504 cas­es that were rolled over from the pre­vi­ous term, 328 of which were for mur­der. However, while acknowl­edg­ing the need to clear the back­log sti­fling the judi­cial sys­tem, Llewellyn warned of the dan­gers of imple­ment­ing an “absolute rule” that cas­es be dis­missed after a min­i­mum of five years before the court. “If you are going to have a five-year lim­it, the sys­tem would be open to abuse, manoeu­vring, and con­trivance, where one side could seek to play musi­cal chairs with the sys­tem,” she warned.

Citing as an exam­ple an accused per­son who has been charged with mur­der and released on bail, she ques­tioned: “He is held after three years [on the run]. Let’s say it takes anoth­er two years to round up the wit­ness­es, are you say­ing he should not be tried again?” Noting that the cir­cum­stances of a pet­ty ses­sion case are dif­fer­ent from those of a mur­der case, the DPP cau­tioned that each case must be assessed on its own mer­it. Tread Cautiously With Five-Year Cases, Warns DPP