If the criminal justice systems of the Caribbean are not seen as being “effective and efficient”, not only will this erode the confidence of the public, but the rule of law will be challenged.
That is the view of Attorney General Dale Marshall as he delivered remarks during the opening session of the PACE Justice Attorneys General Roundtable yesterday at United Nations House, Marine Gardens, Hastings, Christ Church.
Attorneys general from Dominica, Guyana, St Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, and St Kitts and Nevis were in attendance, along with Justice Alice Yorke-Soo Hon, president of the Turks and Caicos Court of Appeal.
The roundtable is being hosted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
Other guests included Stephanie Ziebell, deputy resident representative, UNDP, Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean; Malgorzata Wasilewska, European Union ambassador to the Eastern Caribbean, CARICOM and CARIFORUM; Justice Emilio Manso, criminal judge, General Counsel of the Judiciary of Spain; and Paula Llewellyn, director of public prosecutions (DPP) of Jamaica.
The backlog in the courts, one which Marshall said was a global problem, was among the topics of discussion. He pointed to Canada, which determined if a case was not heard after 18 months, it was delayed for too long. He said this was a vexing issue for him because Barbados had untried murder cases dating back to 2012.
Accused were taking advantage of these delays to sue the State, he added.
“A common feature now of our judicial system is that all of these individuals, all of these accused, not just in murder law but just running the entire gamut of criminal cases, have been seeking relief under constitutional provisions. And you can imagine how galling it must be for citizens,” Marshall said.
He noted as attorneys general they accepted that all citizens – including the accused – had fundamental rights which had to be protected.
“But my constituent living in St Joseph and yours will have a hard time coming to grips with the fact that a person is charged with one murder, sometimes two murders, or multiple firearm offences, because of a delay in a system that they have no control over, the case potentially gets stayed permanently,” he said. “And on top of that, the individual seeks to get damages.
Plea bargaining
“So the State is now taking taxpayers’ money to compensate a person for delaying a trial, and this is not just my experience. I know it is your experience.
Our systems have not been efficient and have not been effective. The good thing is that we have seen a tremendous amount of effort in the last three, four years as a region and individually to grapple with it and to make a difference.”
Marshall said the Needham’s Point Declaration, which was developed by the former Caribbean Court of Justice Academy and adopted by the region in October 2023, was a road map to reforming the criminal justice systems.
He thanked Jamaica’s DPP Llewellyn for her assistance after Barbados adopted plea negotiations legislation, but said judge-only trials were not favoured. He added that plea bargaining legislation was used in an important criminal case, and “if we did not have the legal capacity to do that, we would have had a challenge”.
“So all of these interventions are timely; some we will advance more than others. I can tell you that our local Bar is not excited about judgealone trials. So while we’ve had that legislation now for a year and a half, we haven’t had any judge-alone trials, but the point is that we have a road map to follow.”
Marshall said he was confident that while they would not need to capture all 39 points in the Needham’s Point Declaration, there would be a better functioning criminal justice system.
Last month, at a Barbados Police Service symposium titled
Addressing The Backlogs And Delays In The Barbados Criminal Justice System at Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre, he said since 2011, the number of matters in the High Court jumped from 350 to 1 606.
Ambassador Wasilewska said such gatherings were important because topics like judge-alone trials, plea negotiations, regional legal cooperation and constitutional reform were not merely technical legal issues.
“They are matters that impact people’s lives, their access to justice and their trust in the legal system. They also play a crucial role in shaping the effectiveness of law enforcement, the efficiency of court proceedings and the broader public perception of fairness and justice,” she said.
(SAT)
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