Judge frustrated over delay in starting trials

“You ain’t come here to get adjournments. You come in here to work!”

A frustrated Madam Justice Laurie-Ann Smith-Bovell made this comment on Monday as she expressed displeasure over the constant delay her court was experiencing in starting trials.

The murder trial of Javonne Rommel Haynes and Julius Dmario Ifill was supposed to get underway in Supreme Court No. 4 on Monday, but while the Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Alliston Seale SC indicated that the State was prepared to start, the attorneys for both accused requested an adjournment. 

“For the last three weeks, I have not been able to do a trial because of attorneys. I come here prepared to work, so when you fix a trial as best as possible you are supposed to come ready,” the judge said, insisting that when a trial date is fixed for a case, attorneys must be ready to start.

“How many times do we have to say that? If you are coming into a matter where the date is already fixed and you cannot be ready, you cannot accept the matter.”

She added that attorneys working in association with others also have to be prepared whenever they step into the courtroom.

Justice Smith-Bovell then indicated her unwillingness to move the murder trial date to later in the year.

“I am not moving it to October because the next thing it will be in Civil Court, filing a constitutional motion, saying that the courts are breaching the people’s rights because the trial cannot be heard speedily. You cannot have it both ways,” she told the attorneys.

Senior Counsel Michael Lashley is Haynes’ defence counsel while Ifill is represented by Senior Counsel Andrew Pilgrim in association with Neville Reid.

Pilgrim, who requested the adjournment due to being engaged in another trial, said the issue was the stance being taken by some judges.

“I follow the orders of the court and I try my
best to comply, but when we go to the new courts and say ‘I don’t want dates that are clashing with what I have up here and that I have set’, they say ‘No, we are not taking those long dates’ . . . so when they tell me to come down there and start a case for stealing 50 cents or forging a cheque for $75, I have to start it because I am a subject of their courts. So I may be down there doing monkey cases, and you all have me up here set to do murders, and the client is ready to work, counsel is ready to work, but they start me down there with monkey cases,”
he said.

The trial was adjourned until February 12.

Haynes, 23, of Syndicate Road and Ifill, 30 of Richard’s Land, both of Bush Hall, St Michael are charged with the June 7, 2020 shooting death of Kadeem Brathwaite.