The inability of the Judiciary to manage its own finances has been identified as a major factor affecting that organisation’s ability to manage efficiently its stagnant backlog of criminal cases.
In his annual address at the opening of the 2015-2016 law term at the Hall of Justice, Port-of-Spain, on Wednesday, Chief Justice Ivor Archie pointed to the Judiciary’s lack of financial autonomy as a main stumbling block in its drive to implement new measures to address inefficiencies in the justice system.
As he revealed that several infrastructure projects, including the renovation and construction of courts over the past year, have been delayed by issues of funding from Government, Archie said: “The country has spent upwards of $300 billion in the past five years and we have not yet turned sod on a single new judicial facility.
“Experience teaches us that it is difficult to keep the momentum on construction projects and responsibly commit resources when funding is not available during the timeframe that the project is expected to be completed, funding cannot be assured during the beginning of the year, there is a long lead time between requesting funding and obtaining funding.”
While Archie raised concerns with the current financing arrangement, he noted that the organisation was able to manage its limited resources to facilitate the implementation of several initiatives which assisted in the Judiciary’s slight improvement in its management of cases.
Archie said 130 criminal cases were disposed of in the High Court over the past year, a 51 per cent increase on the previous year and a 32 per cent increase on the organisation’s six-year average.
“When we consider the time to disposal from filing, 57 per cent of the matters were disposed of within three years, 67 per cent within four years and 86 per cent within five years. For this I must commend the judges for the extraordinary effort that they put in,” Archie said.
He attributed the positive increase to the introduction of Goodyear hearings in which the court gives an accused person an indication of the maximum sentence they would face if they chose to plead guilty and avoid a trial.
“We anticipate that persons who have been in remand for periods approaching their likely sentence will utilise this procedure. Already considerable interest has been generated. When utilised in conjunction with the revised plea bargaining legislation, we anticipate a significant reduction in the backlog,” Archie said.
Despite recognising the encouraging statistics, Archie was still critical of attorneys whose actions undermine the efficency of trials by taking on over-ambitious caseloads and by filing a multitude of procedural appeals.
As opposed to criminal case, the statistics provided by Archie showed improvement in the disposition of civil cases in the High Court and Court of Appeal with judgments being delivered within six months of the end of trials in almost 100 per cent of cases.
“The deployment of alternative dispute resolution mechanisms is an essential part of any effective justice system. We do not exist to do trials, we exist to provide a dispute resolution service in which a trial is only one option and one of last resort,” Archie said as advocated for mediation to be more widely adopted in lieu of expensive and unnecessary litigation.
— See Pages A11, A12 and A13 for conclusion of the Chief Justice’s speech