Chaos in Courtroom No. 5

Lawyers, clients often locked in legal limbo as cases meet with delays

The first thing that hits you when you open the door is the noise and the heat and the chaos.

Courtroom No. 5 at provincial court in St. John’s is abuzz, with lawyers and members of the public milling about getting ready for another day’s 9:30 a.m. proceedings.

A dozen Crown attorneys occupy one corner at the front of the 60-foot by 30-foot room — some seated at the lawyers’ table, others leaning against the wall or on their trolleys stacked with bankers boxes of files.

Defence lawyers are in the other corner, some snatching a final few moments to speak to their clients, while duty counsel Peter Kearsey tries to juggle the legion of people who are there unrepresented.

The five rows of padded seats on each side of the court are full to capacity with people accused of crimes, along with their family and friends.

“Jesus, come on! Get on with it,” one man sitting in the back says, folding his arms and shifting in his seat.

The room is so full, sheriff ’s officers tell some people to wait out in the hallway for their name to be called.

Find yourself in trouble with the law and Courtroom No. 5 will be your second stop in the court system. Courtroom No. 7 is where first appearances are made.

Shortly after he was appointed about six years ago, Chief Judge Mark Pike had the idea to gather all the cases in one courtroom — No. 5 — in order to assign them courtrooms for future appearances, a clearinghouse court of sorts.

It wasn’t long before he realized it wasn’t working.

Lawyers complain about being tied up in No. 5 for long waits, only to have cases set over for various reasons — either the accused doesn’t have a lawyer yet or hasn’t applied to Legal Aid, the defence is waiting on evidence from the police or the Crown, or lawyers have been unable to contact their clients.

It’s also frustrating for people facing charges, who have to take time off from work or school, pay cab fare or bus fare and babysitters in order to get to court, not to mention having to pay their lawyer, only to have their case postponed.

A few weeks later when the cases are called in court again, it’s the same old story.

Pike said Courtroom No. 5 pro- ceedings can turn into a huge headache — a waste of everyone’s time.

“I’ve had many failures in this job,” he said. “Courtroom No. 5 is one of them. … And quite frankly, I’m frustrated because I haven’t been able to make much progress on that front.”

Ninety per cent of cases called in No. 5 aren’t ready to proceed, he said, and end up being set over to another date for a status report.

Last year, there were more than 77,000 appearances for 15,000 cases at provincial court. Each case makes a couple of first appearances in Courtroom No. 7, which means approximately 47,000 of those appearances were in No. 5.

That’s too much, Pike said.

But he believes he has an idea that will reduce the number of unproductive court appearances.