By L.K. Hewlett
St. Kitts Reporter
Cabinet has recently approved a recommendation to appoint an additional magistrate, however some local trial lawyers say appointing an additional judge would be more prudent.
The Cabinet of Ministers under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Honourable Dr. Denzil L. Douglas approved the step they say is necessary to speed up the trials of persons charged with criminal offences.
Based on the recommendation of Attorney General Honourable Dennis Merchant, the appointment would be on a short-term assignment to reduce the backlog of Preliminary Inquiries (PI).
—This decision is in keeping with government’s proactive approach in dealing with the incidence of crime, said Minister of State for Information, Senator the Honourable Nigel Carty at the Post Cabinet briefing.
The Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis currently shares one Judge and Public Prosecution team. The St. Kitts judicial institute houses two Magistrate Courts and one High Court in the Lee Llewellyn Moore Judicial and Legal Services Complex.
This, some defense attorneys claim is creating a significant pile up of criminal cases that are to be tried at the High Court, while at the same time depriving persons of their right to a speedy trial.
In the case of Leon Isaac last month, the defendant spent twenty months in prison awaiting trial, only to have the case against him dismissed due to lack of evidence.
There have been many other instances where persons have spent more time behind bars awaiting trial than the actual time they were sentenced to serve after being found guilty. It is also not standard procedure to have sentences reduced due to time served in prison before a judge heard the case.
The recently concluded September assizes saw forty-seven cases on the trial roster, thirty of which were traversed from previous assizes. Several of these cases involved crimes that occurred as far back as 2004.
Of the forty-seven cases slated for the September assizes, over twenty had to be traversed to the upcoming assizes that will begin on January 15, 2008. The traversing of matters to later assizes causes a chain reaction as cases that were originally set for a particular court assizes, would be pushed back to accommodate those that were brought forward from previous assizes.
Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines Dr. Ralph Gonsalves has given his stamp of approval to an overhaul of the sub-regional judicial system, a step he opined, would improve the delivery of justice in the Eastern Caribbean.
Recently, P.M. Gonsalves publicly criticized several judgments handed down by some of the magistrates in his country for questionable, lenient sentences doled out for gun related offences.
