New justices pledge to tackle court backlog

Barbados’ two newest justices have vowed to use their experience to help reduce the backlog plaguing the nation’s courts.

Victoria Charles-Clarke, newly appointed justice of appeal and Bryan Lawson Weekes, high court judge, were sworn in by acting President Jeffrey Gibson at State House on Tuesday.

“You find that because of the delays when victims have to give evidence over a long period of time, they lose interest and cases may not be able to go forward,” Justice Charles-Clarke said.

With over 30 years of experience as Registrar of the High Court, magistrate and Director of Public Prosecutions of St Lucia, she pointed out that in that jurisdiction, sufficiency hearings have been introduced as one of the measures to address the backlog.

“This is where the process of preliminary inquiries has been abolished and when persons are charged with an offence, it goes before a judge who conducts a sufficiency hearing. In some jurisdictions, it goes before a Master and the matter goes before a judge in a very short time,” she explained. 

“The Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court has also introduced criminal procedure rules which provide timelines by which cases can remain in the system and that has helped tremendously in that both the prosecution and defence have a time by which they have to file documents and be ready to present the case before the judge.”

She also made a plug for judge-alone trials and specialised courts to be implemented, and for the introduction of technology to help increase the speed at which cases are disposed of.

“With the right amount of resources and commitment, I think it can be achieved,” Justice Charles-Clarke asserted.

Honoured by the opportunity to serve in office, Justice Weekes, who has practised family, civil and commercial litigation in Barbados, declared his intention to help Chief Justice Leslie Haynes with the “significant backlog that exists now”.

“It is going to take a lot of work, long hours and a robust approach to civil litigation especially, which I intend to pursue,” he said. “Without working hard, we can’t achieve the goals which the Civil Procedure Rules which were brought in 2008/2009 intended. Judges under those rules have a duty to pursue the resolution of the dispute between the parties who have come to court. As a judge, I intend to pursue that goal, whether through ordering mediation which I would have jurisdiction to do or to take very robust case management approaches.”

Chief Justice Haynes expressed happiness with the appointments, saying: “We now have a full complement of judges and it is up to the judiciary to do their work.”

Admitting that he was not aware of the actual size of the backlog, Haynes outlined that measures have been put in place to reintroduce those matters “that appear to have fallen through the net” back into the system.

“We have introduced status hearings whereby those files that have fallen through the cracks are reintroduced into the court via the Master (of the High Court) who will assess the case to determine whether documents have to be filed, whether the matter is ready for trial or pretrial review. I then receive a review from the Master and assign the judge to deal with the matter,” he said, calculating that by the end of the year, approximately 500 of these cases will be back into the system.

The chief justice said there was “absolutely nothing wrong with a judge-alone trial”, but noted that alone would not ease the backlog.

He suggested a holistic approach be utilised.

“There are a number of things to put in place to ease the backlog and judge-alone is only one,” he said. “Do not feel that one fix will sort the system because the system starts from the police to the preliminary inquiry or paper committal and it goes right through the system until sentencing. So there are a number of areas that have to be looked at.” 

(JB)