‘Too many not willing to come to court’

WESTERN BUREAU:

The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) believes that the issue of court cases taking years to be completed, or disposed of without a full resolution, is rooted in citizens distancing themselves from their personal responsibility in the management of justice.

The recurring issue of lengthy completion times for court cases, including the duration of trial matters because of difficulties with the juror selection process, has been a longstanding roadblock in the administration of justice, for attorneys as well as for their clients. Adding to the problem are reports of police personnel failing to complete their case files in a timely manner.

Acting DPP Claudette Thompson told The Gleaner that the true cause of such delays is the refusal of citizens to cooperate with and participate in the process that will allow cases to be completed in a timely manner.

“It is easy to say it’s the fault of the police, and oftentimes as prosecutors we do it [make that accusation], but if we are fair and true and honest, the police can’t give us the material that the members of the public are not willing to give us. When we talk about delay, a lot of things come into play, and I do not want to be quoted as saying that it is all on the police, because then I would be telling an untruth… people have disengaged from the justice system, meaning that ‘unless it comes to my door, I really don’t care’,” said Thompson.

“All Jamaicans who are affected by, impacted by, or who know something about a specific crime, have a role to play. There are too many Jamaicans who have seen something and who have made a report, but are unwilling to give a statement,” Thompson continued. “There are too many Jamaicans who have seen something, who have made a report, and who have given a statement, but they are not willing to come to court. All of that plays into the delay that affects all of us, and it is frustrating.”

Assistant DPP Ashtelle Steele agreed with that assessment, citing a recent murder case she had to dispose of because two eyewitnesses in that matter refused to cooperate despite having previously given statements implicating the defendant.

REFUSED TO GIVE EVIDENCE

“I had to offer no-evidence in about five or six recent murder matters, and in one of the matters, the deceased was the son of one of the eyewitnesses. There were two eyewitnesses in the matter, the deceased person’s mother and brother, and both of them who witnessed the incident refused to give evidence, and they went into the box and said they are not going to say anything at all,” Steele recounted.

“All of us in Jamaica have a role to play in relation to the justice system. Yes, delays are caused by incomplete files, but they are also caused by us trying to locate witnesses, by us trying to convince witnesses to come and give evidence in relation to the statements they have given, and delays are also caused by the volume of matters that we have.”

The apparent unwillingness of citizens to participate in court matters can also be seen in the lack of available jurors to try cases at the Circuit Court level in some parishes, such as the recently concluded sitting of that court’s Michaelmas session in St James where none of the parish’s 300 prepared jury summonses were served by the police.

In that situation, which presiding High Court Justice Bertram Morrison described at the time as a “national disgrace”, the excuses that were given included reluctance of prospective jurors to cooperate.

The slow pace of cases being resolved in the Circuit Court can also be attributed to the number of cases which are traversed or carried over from one session to another, compared to the number which are actually tried to completion within a given session. In the Home Circuit Court in Kingston, for example, of the 982 cases which were listed for the Michaelmas session in 2024, only 93 were prosecuted while the rest were traversed.

Regarding other parishes’ Circuit Courts during the 2024 Michaelmas session, St James saw only 45 of its 340 listed cases prosecuted, while Hanover had only four of its 135 cases prosecuted. Trelawny prosecuted 36 cases out of 178; St Ann, 24 out of 231; and St Mary, 55 out of 178.

PROSECUTION STATS

In Westmoreland, 367 of its 394 cases ended up being traversed without prosecution, while St Elizabeth traversed 169 out of 189 cases. Portland only prosecuted 20 out of 96 cases; St Thomas, 37 out of 206; and Clarendon, 19 out of 226. There were no available statistics for St Catherine and Manchester.

In 2022, Chief Justice Bryan Sykes pressed for the practice of trial by jury and several other processes in the justice system to be reviewed, arguing that bench trials, in which judgments are done by the judge instead of a jury, would save judicial time and allow for more cases to be tried.

Speaking with The Gleaner last November, on the proposal to remove jury trials, Justice Minister Delroy Chuck said the action on the suggestion cannot be rushed into. He pointed out that, up to that time, plans to create a joint select committee to review the matter were still under way.

“I have no difficulty with bench trials and, in fact, 99 per cent of the cases in Jamaica are done by bench trial, especially in the parish courts, and quite a number of Gun Court cases have been tried by bench trial. But I think that for real serious offences such as murder, if it is the wish of the accused to have a jury trial, it should be available,” said Chuck.

“Even though the chief justice is promoting the removal of jury trials, it is not a matter we should just do willy-nilly. We are most certainly going to set up a joint select committee so that persons can come out and appear before the committee to indicate whether or not we should abolish jury trials.”

In the meantime, Thompson rubbished the various proposed reasons for lack of witness cooperation or juror participation, including fear.

“No one should be surprised that the same people that become witnesses come from the same pool of Jamaica that we are pulling jurors from. It is easy for people to say that the disengagement is because they are afraid, but what exactly are they afraid of? What is the basis of the fear? Witnesses have turned up to our offices and they say, ‘Miss, mi ’fraid’, and they can’t put into words what they are afraid of,” said Thompson.

“There is legislation that addresses fear. If there is a basis for fear, there are things we can do. We have not sat on our hands and said, ‘Boy, people are afraid, let’s leave it at that’. We have had amendments to the Evidence Act that treat with fear when you can ground it, but I think it has become easy, perhaps sexy to say ‘I am afraid’.”

christopher.thomas@gleanerjm.com