Statistics needed on court cases

Mon, Jun 24th 2013, 11:25 AM

Dear Editor,

In recent weeks, government and police officials have made what may well be unjustified criticisms of the court system in The Bahamas. The question that arises in my mind is: Which end of the court system are they talking about?

I had the privilege to serve as a magistrate from January 2005 to November 2006 principally working the Family Island circuit in 17 districts, hearing cases between Bimini and Inagua. During that period, I got tired of the continual complaint that the courts were not disposing of cases quickly and giving numerous adjournments so I began to keep some rudimentary statistics on the causes behind the adjournments that occurred on my circuit.

That necessitated my first doing some research to determine how I would keep these statistics and how I would assign responsibility and reasons for adjournments. I discovered that the British had a system whereby they were monitoring ineffective and aborted criminal and other trials before the lower courts in that country so I adapted the system that they had and created a form to capture this information.

Under 'Ineffective Trials', that is those that had to be adjourned, I assigned three reasons why the prosecution was not able to proceed with a trial: (1) the prosecution was not ready to proceed (for reasons like drugs had not yet been analyzed); (2) a police witness was absent; or (3) a civilian witness was absent.

I assigned six reasons why the defendant was not able to proceed with a trial: (1) the defendant (on bail) failed to attend court resulting in a warrant of arrest; (2) the defendant was ill and sent a sick certificate; (3) the defendant on remand was not brought down from Fox Hill prison; (4) the defendant appeared to cancel a warrant of arrest; (5) the defense was not ready to proceed (usually due to the absence of his or her lawyer); or (6) a defense witness was absent.

I assigned two reasons to the magistrate as to why the trial could not proceed: (1) insufficient court time/the magistrate was not available (usually no ticket to travel)/listing too many cases for hearing; and (2) other/unspecified reasons.

Under 'Aborted Trials', I assigned six reasons as to why a scheduled trial did not take place: (1) the defendant pleaded guilty before the trial started; (2) the defendant pleaded guilty after the case started; (3) the prosecution terminated the case due to insufficient evidence; (4) the prosecution ended the case because of the absence of one or more witnesses/the complaint was withdrawn; (5) the prosecution ended the case for other reasons; or (6) the case ended for other/non-specified reasons.

Cumulatively, what emerged from the statistics was that both the prosecution (48 percent) and the defendant (48 percent) were roughly equally responsible for delaying trials while I was the cause of the delay about four percent of the time. Another statistic that I would have liked to have kept track of was the length of time that it was taking to dispose of criminal cases, from arraignment to final disposition whether by trial and verdict or aborting of the trial.

If the court system in The Bahamas kept these types of statistics, steps could be taken to identify the real causes of delays in criminal trials as well as identifying those courts where the problems are most prevalent and steps taken to address them. Many years ago, The Bahamas initiated something called BIJIS (Bahamas Integrated Justice Information System) which was a computerized system designed to track criminal cases from arrest and arraignment to final disposition. There seems to be an even greater need for such a system today to provide reliable data and statistics on the actual status of criminal cases within the courts system.

At the other end of the court system rainbow is the Supreme Court. Criticism has been levelled over the expectation that with an increased number of judges trying criminal cases, the number of such cases awaiting trial should decrease. In my opinion, this assumption fails to consider a number of factors, some of which are beyond a judge's control. Let's say that after vacation and other leave a judge has as many as 40 weeks in a year for criminal trials. If all criminal trials coming before that judge that year last exactly one week, that judge could possibly hear 40 cases that year.

The number of criminal cases that a judge can try in any year declines by the length of time that each criminal trial takes, so realistically the maximum number is more likely to be somewhere between 20 and 30. Some headway can only be made in reducing the backlog if the number of criminal cases awaiting trial remains static. However, that is not the case and most likely several hundred cases are being added each year to the number of criminal cases already awaiting trial. So the backlog never really decreases.

What are some of the possible solutions to this problem? I can suggest a few: (1) reduce the number or categories of criminal cases that can be tried in the Supreme Court on indictment. This has been done in some of the African countries where only serious crimes like murder, manslaughter, treason, arson, etc., are tried by the Supreme Court; (2) reduce or eliminate the number or categories of criminal cases that are tried by a jury - a bit drastic, particularly for those who subscribe to the "price of freedom is eternal vigilance" school of legal thinking; (3) increase the maximum sentencing and fining jurisdiction of magistrates; (4) create a third, intermediate layer of courts (District Court) with a criminal jurisdiction greater than the Magistrates Court but less than the Supreme Court. This third layer of courts would not try summary (minor) offenses which would only be tried by magistrates but it could try certain indictable offenses that are not otherwise tried by the Supreme Court and those offenses where the defendant currently has the option to be tried in Magistrates Court or in the Supreme Court. This type of District Court system is currently employed in countries like Australia and Hong Kong.

Whichever direction those in charge decide to go about addressing these problems, it would seem that they first need some sound statistical data at their disposal before deciding on the best course of action.

Click here to read more at The Nassau Guardian

 Sponsored Ads