Court backlog still plaguing swift delivery of justice

In spite of adding more judges, Barbados’ courts continue to face a significant backlog of cases. Attorney General Dale Marshall has attributed it to the impact of COVID-19, the inefficiency of several systems and the need for speedier delivery of rulings.
Marshall said there were two judges dealing with a backlog of over 1,000 criminal cases when the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) took over the Government in 2018. Three additional judges were appointed to help address the problem, he said. However, the onset of the pandemic created further delay in reducing the case load.
“We went from two to five and that began to work very well and I must pay tribute to those judges on the criminal bench. Those five judges have really stepped up to the plate, but COVID hit and during those two years of COVID we couldn’t do jury trials. Now I will say, to their credit, that in each of those two years they disposed of 200 indictable matters. You can dispose of matters other than by trial, people plead guilty and so on.
“In each of those two years, 200 were disposed of so we were able to dispose of 400 during those two years without jury trials. But of course you keep adding, so the backlog is still up there. Our response has been to appoint a further three criminal judges. So we’ve gone from two to five to eight,” he added.
Marshall said the new facility of the Forde Symmonds complex will accommodate three of those judges.
“As I speak, we now have a total criminal bench active of seven, because one court in the Forde Symmonds Complex is not yet ready, because of some challenges with the supply chain of certain critical inputs. That third court, which used to be the number one court, will become our eighth criminal court and that should be finished by the end of this month and our eighth criminal judge will fit into that complex,” he told the Lower House during the Estimates debate.
However, Marshall insisted that adding more judges will only solve part of the problem as decisions must be made quicker.
“At the end of the day, when the rubber hits the road, judges need to give decisions faster. I called for it, I complained about it when I was in Opposition and I will not resile from that position. I can say that by adding additional judges, we have seen a faster delivery of some decisions, but that tends to be because the particular judges have been working fast,” he stressed.
(JB)