Judges at work

Despite the challenges brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic the island’s judicial system has significantly improved since the addition of judges to the Supreme Court almost two years ago.

That is the view of Attorney General Dale Marshall, who today revealed that face-to-face jury trials would be resuming soon.

In October 2019, seven new judges – one Court of Appeal judge, four High Court judges and two temporary High Court judges – were sworn in by Governor General Dame Sandra Mason.

At that time, Marshall said the appointments would help reduce the large backlog and expedite the movement of cases.

In an interview with Barbados TODAY, Marshall said the new judges had done as expected.

“I am pleased with the initiatives in the court. You will know that we had swelled the ranks of our judges from 13 to 20. There have been some challenges because COVID obviously meant that a lot of hearings that would have taken place had to be stopped from time to time because a member of staff would have to quarantine and so on. But generally, because we have had to cut down on face-to-face court activity and rely more and more on technology there would have been some challenges, so the progress we would have liked to have made has been slowed down significantly because of the impact of COVID on our court system,” he said.

“We are returning slowly again to a state of normalcy. Face-to-face jury trials will resume in the very, very, near future because obviously our ability to conduct High Court criminal cases would have been affected because of the inability of us to have a jury present given the COVID situation. That is being addressed.”

Last Thursday, the island’s Chief Justice Sir Patterson Cheltenham chastised lawyers for contributing to delays and backlogs in the judicial system.

He contended that some attorneys had filed nothing else but the notice of appeal, leading to 70 matters “laying idle”.

In their response, the Barbados Bar Association explained that the existence of “cases lying idle in the system” could be ascribed to many factors, including system-wide challenges.

While the Attorney General admitted that the issue raised by the Chief Justice was problematic, he acknowledged there were also other issues that needed to be addressed.

“The Chief Justice has commented on the matter of delay and of lawyers not attending court. This is an issue that we have to grapple [with]. I would say though, that it is a situation that requires being addressed both by the bench and the Bar.

“I am happy to see that the Chief Justice is essentially calling for a system where people involved in litigation are called into account whether those people are witnesses, whether those people are lawyers, litigants and even judges.

“It can’t just stop with the people appearing before the court. It also has to address the inefficiencies of the court system itself and areas where our judiciary has not necessarily acted as we would have liked them to act,” Marshall said.

The AG said he hoped Cheltenham’s “passion and interest” would see both the bench and the Bar be more accountable to the citizenry of Barbados and to the judicial system.