Jordan ruling still putting pressure on Crown
Headway has been made in clearing case backlog, but courts still behind schedule
Almost a year and a half since the Supreme Court set hard deadlines for criminal cases to make their way through the judicial system, prosecutors are still feeling pressured by the clock.
While a handful of cases have been thrown out as a result of unreasonable delay, with others pending, and the Crown dropping less pressing matters to free up court time, the judicial system is still under the gun.
In the July 2016 ruling, the Supreme Court said trials at the provincial court level had to be concluded within 18 months of a person being charged and those in Court of Queen’s Bench had to be done in 30 months.
While a transitional provision in the ruling made those deadlines somewhat flexible for cases involving charges laid before the decision, come January 2018 in provincial court and January 2019 in the Court of Queen’s Bench, that will no longer be the case.
Calgary prosecutor Jonathan Hak, who is in charge of co-ordinating cases at risk of so-called Jordan applications, said the system is still under a lot of strain.
“The biggest problem that we’re facing right now is still in the Court of Queen’s Bench,” he said recently.
“While we’re able to get some earlier trial dates for cases a week or less, we still have a significant delay in getting trial dates for cases that are longer than a week,” he said.
“Right now, we’re looking at March of 2019, so it certainly is still a problem and it’s most acute in Queen’s Bench, because of a lack of ... justices.”
Hak said while there have been cases stayed by judges on application by the defence, or dropped by the Crown to free up prosecutorial resources, the numbers aren’t as high as initially feared.
“There have been cases stayed in provincial court and Queen’s Bench where there’s been a Jordan application, in a number of cases the Crown has simply abandoned the prosecution, because we wouldn’t survive a Jordan application,” he said.
“But the number’s actually a lot less than you would think.”
According to Alberta Justice statistics, there have been 13 successful applications, 11 more are pending and the Crown has “proactively stayed” 14 others.
Hak conceded even those few cases which do get dropped or thrown out can cause grief for victims, the police and prosecutors.
“It is frustrating because most people, except perhaps the defendant, actually want an adjudi- cation on the merits, they want someone to make a decision,” Hak said.
“What a Jordan application does is it takes away from the court the ability to make a decision.”
Hak said while the Crown has been able to reduce the pressure by dropping cases doomed to be stayed and in some instances skipping preliminary inquiries, the long-term answer remains additional resources.
“Aside from triaging, which is a major way of trying to streamline cases, we are using direct indictments when it’s appropriate, and so that does knock out many months from the trial time,” he said.
“We need more Queen’s Bench judges, ( but) we also need more prosecutors, because we don’t have enough prosecutors to do this,” he said.