The criminal justice system in the Caribbean region is becoming more and more under the control of lawyers who practice criminal law, according to Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves at the recent CARICOM Crime Symposium in Trinidad. Gonsalves pointed out that he was not ‘talking about any particular country.
Gonsalves said it is well established that the oxygen of the legal profession is money, and lawyers use delays in the court system in order to have trials adjourn and adjourn and adjourn and then complain about how long the trial takes.
“Sometimes it may be an absence of enough resources, and I’m not denying that, but too many judges have allowed too many lawyers who practice criminal law to control the court system under the guise of protecting the rights of the accused person, who in fact is entitled constitutionally to the presumption of innocence and to a fair trial before an independent tribunal within a reasonable time.” “And nobody would wish to undermine any of those constitutional protections.”
“However, those constitutional protections cannot and do not mean that you must take a long time over a trial and give adjournments upon adjournments, and witnesses migrate and memories fade, and a lot of times you have to withdraw the prosecution because delay is part of the defense, and judges ought to know that.”
Gonsalves said some persons who are not lawyers and who are prime ministers may not speak the manner in which he speaks, but he has to say to his brethren on the bench that they have to start controlling their courts again because the victims’ families in the case of homicides do not understand and appreciate what is happening in this regard.
“If a politician opens his mouth and says it, they say you’re interfering with the independence of the judiciary. I say that justice is not a cloistered virtue, and just as I am subject to reasonable criticism, judges themselves and magistrates must be subjected to reasonable criticism. It is not a contempt of court, so to speak; if we cannot shine the light of transparency as to what goes on there and reasonableness, well, then a lot of what we are doing here will be rendered meaningless”.
Gonsalves said there are trials now, criminal trials, and they are doing a kind of pretrial case management for one of the largest kinds of civil cases.
“This is why the governments are seeking to address certain specific matters in this regard without in any way encroaching on the independence of the judiciary, which is something that is very treasured,” Gonsalves said.
