File
The Supreme Court building, downtown Kingston.

Barbara Gayle, Senior Court Reporter

Although the Ministry of Justice is making elaborate and seemingly expensive plans to reform the justice system islandwide, the provision of simple handrails at the four jury boxes for the safety of jurors in the Home Circuit Court, King Street, downtown Kingston, seems not about to happen any time soon.

Just last month, two female jurors fell, a day a part, while descending the steps from the jury box due to the absence of handrails. Persistent pleas from prosecutors and defence lawyers for the erection of wooden handrails to ensure the safety of jurors, have apparently fallen on deaf ears.

Overall, the justice system tends to be marked by breakdowns which were evident last week when several murder cases set for trial in the Home Circuit Court had to be adjourned because sufficient jurors were not available for the cases to start.

In the Home Circuit Court last week Wednesday, Senior Superintendent Kenneth Fairclough and Inspector Keith Brown of the Jamaica Constabulary's Detention and Courts Division, were obviously concerned as they explained to Mrs. Justice Norma McIntosh why their department was unable to serve summonses on 850 citizens of the Corporate Area of Kingston and St. Andrew requiring them to report for jury duty.

Shortage of manpower and motor vehicles are two of the several problems the police officers say they encounter in serving summonses on potential jurors and on witnesses islandwide. However, they are hoping that the situation will improve soon so that accused persons will not have to languish in custody because there are not enough jurors in the system to enable trials to get underway.

Senior Supt. Fairclough and Insp. Brown suggested that the authorities consider enacting legislation to have jurors selected by way of the tax registration system, using tax registration numbers (TRNs), instead of through the voters' list, as is the current practice. The current jury list is made up from the 2002 voters" list because, the police say, the 2006 list is not yet available to them.

Lack of jurors

Mrs. Justice McIntosh said she was aware of the problem and referred to a particular murder case which had to be traversed five times - from one term to the next - because of a lack of jurors. The judge warned that if steps were not taken soon to improve the situation, then the justice system was going to grind to a halt, resulting at the least in the closure of some courts.

Mr. Andrejs Berzins, Q.C., from the Canadian Bar Association, is a member of a team of consultants from Canada, which, with Jamaican officials, is designing a programme for the comprehensive reform of the Jamaican justice system. He was in the Home Circuit Court last week Wednesday when the disclosures were made.

He told The Sunday Gleaner that as consultants, they were providing support, assistance, ideas and options, based on the Canadian experience.

The reform plans are to be completed by June 30, 2007. The consultants will not only be visiting courthouses throughout the island, but will also be holding public forums at various locations islandwide to get feedback and input from the public on ways to improve the justice system in Jamaica.

Modernisation strategies

Mr. Berzins said the main objective of the task force was to devise modernisation strategies for the courts. A major goal is to have government-assigned court reporters in the Resident Magistrates' Courts to speed up the availability of transcripts, without which convicted persons who wish to appeal, cannot get their appeals heard expeditiously.

Asked where the funding would be coming from for the moder-nisation of the justice system, he said that was going to be the decision of the Jamaican government, adding that the Minister of Justice had indicated that the government was committed to providing the funding. He added that the question as to funding was one which was frequently asked of the consultants.

On viewing a courtroom in the Home Circuit Court where cases were being put off for various reasons, Mr. Berzins asked how "red paint" had come to be splattered on the cream-painted walls of the dingy courtroom.

It was pointed out to him that what he thought was red paint was really the red polish that cleaners used to polish the wooden floor and which resulted in the unsightly appearance of the walls. Indeed, jurors complain from time to time that their shoes "chang colour" because of the heavy application of red polish on the courtroom floor. The Canadian consultants would do well too, to have a look at the Corporate Area Coroner's Court at 79 Duke Street, just below Gordon House.