Case backlog
April 24, 2007
The island's 13 Resident Magistrates' Courts, and the outstation courthouses are reported to have an accumulated backlog of more than 200,000 cases.
The Home (Kingston) Circuit Court has a huge backlog of cases and for the last 10 years more than 100 cases have been traversed from one circuit session to the next, year after year. Despite frequent pledges by judges, prosecutors and defence lawyers to do everything possible to reduce the number of cases on the trial list, the situation remains essentially unchanged. New cases are added to the list each term and the cycle continues, adding to the backlog.
"It is like a recurring decimal at the Home Circuit, how many serious criminal cases are traversed from the Hilary to the Easter to the Michaelmas session, year after year," a lawyer told The Gleaner.
A typical Home Circuit session will open with at least 150 cases on the trial list. All the parties involved undertake to work their hardest to have all the cases completed. But invariably, when the term ends, 100 or more of the cases are traversed to the next session, resulting in the new session starting with a backlog. Special efforts were made a few years ago to reduce the trial list by having one or two of the four criminal courts sit through the legal vacation in August, but still the list remains high.
Traversed cases
Statistics show that, since 2001, the courts have not been able to make a significant dent in the backlog of cases. The Michaelmas session of 2001, which ran from September 16 to December 20, had 243 cases listed for trial. However, only 51 of those cases were disposed of and 192 cases traversed to the next session.
The situation has not changed since and the latest statistics, 2006, show that the Hilary session (January to March) had 236 cases on the trial list. When that session ended, 187 cases were traversed to the Easter session ( April to July). The Easter session opened on April 12, 2006 and 235 cases were listed for trial, but only 45 cases were disposed of. The other 190 cases were traversed to the Michaelmas session which, with new cases, had a total of 218 cases for trial.
This year, the Hilary session started on January 7 with 258 cases on the trial list, 173 of them having been traversed from the Michaelmas session because only 44 cases were disposed of during that term. During this term, several new cases are added to the list so this session will have more than 258 cases for trial. There are more than 100 murder cases on the list each term.
In February this year, Justice Kay Beckford, presiding in the Home Circuit Court, pleaded passionately with prosecutors and defence counsel not to put incomplete cases on the trial list.
There were three cases on the list in her court and not one got off the ground for various reasons.
"It is more usual than unusual that matters are put down on the trial list when they are not ready for trial," the judge commented. She apologised to the jurors and asked them to return the next day.
Author: Gleaner Reporter
Source: Jamaica Gleaner
