Chuck urges Justice Brooks to clear court backlog
JUSTICE Minister Delroy Chuck yesterday charged newly appointed Court of Appeal President Justice Patrick Brooks to ensure a timely reduction in the number of backlogged cases at the high court, stressing that the issue has persisted for too long.
Justice Brooks replaces Justice Dennis Morrison, who retired on December 4, having served four years in the post.
Chuck, who was speaking in the House of Representatives, said while he has been informed that the number of judgements handed down in the court has “increased significantly” this year, backlogged cases have continued to plague the system.
“This House cannot ignore that our courts are functioning and improving significantly, but at the level of the Court of Appeal it is absolutely important that delays, delivery of judgements [and] backlog should become a thing of the past,” the justice minister stressed.
“So, the challenge to the new president is to ensure that the backlog is reduced significantly [and] that judgements are delivered in a timely manner. There are far too many judgements, not only in the Supreme Court but in the Court of Appeal, that are still lagging for months and years,” he added.
The Court of Appeal’s annual report 2019 indicates that there were 427 outstanding civil records proceedings at the Supreme Court when compared to the 401 recorded over a similar period for 2018. The figure for 2020 is not yet available.
Pending appeals stood at 1,817 at the end of 2019 when compared to 1,734 recorded at the end of 2018.
Retired Justice Morrison indicated in the report that “there can be no gainsaying the fact that we will also need to step up our written judgement output if we are to make a significant impact on the backlog of reserved judgements in 2020”.
Yesterday, Chuck pointed to a case which was heard in September 2016 but a judgement was only delivered two weeks ago.
“That’s four years. That should become a thing of the past. It’s important that we send a message to the courts that the citizens of this country deserve to have justice delivered in a timely manner and the judgements are a part of the delivery of justice and we ask the new president to ensure that first-class facilities are backed up by first-class delivery of justice,” said Chuck.
Meanwhile, Justice Morrison noted in his report that another major area of concern for the court continues to be “the ever-growing number of cases in which pending appeals cannot be heard because of the absence of the written transcripts or records of the proceedings in the court below”.
The 2019 figures, he said, show a 21.18 per cent increase in the number of outstanding transcripts in criminal cases and a 6.4 per cent increase in outstanding records of proceedings in civil cases.
“Equally worrying is the lack of any significant movement in relation to the older cases in both categories. The overall total of 839 outstanding transcripts and records effectively reduces the court’s inventory of unheard appeals by close to 50 per cent and therefore has the potential to distort our disposal rate figures. But, more significantly, particularly so in relation to criminal appeals, it signifies an ongoing departure from the explicit constitutional guarantee of fair hearings within a reasonable time,” he said.