Attorney-at-Law Ronald Burch-Smith, says that Senior Counsel Ralph Ramkarran’s description of the justice system “being on the verge of collapse” is no exaggeration; and credits the deficiencies to the absence of the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) which should have been reconstituted some six years ago.
In an invited comment, Burch-Smith, who is also President of the Guyana Bar Association, but clarified that he was sharing his personal views on the issues, told the Sunday Stabroek that there is no legal impediment to appointing the JSC.
In fact, he was quite frank in his view that it was all politics and gamesmanship at play, which he described as oppressive—stymieing the reconvening of this commission—which is integral to the efficient functioning of the judiciary.
“The issue is one of political convenience and gamesmanship. It has long been dangerous and now threatens the foundations of the administration of justice. It is oppressive to the judges and litigants,” the Bar Association president said.
In his column in the last Sunday Stabroek, Ramkarran said that the criminal justice system and the appeal system are in a state of collapse.
He did not assign blame for this but it was clear that he was referring to the PPP/C government’s failure to reconvene the JSC to enable the appointment of more judges.
Adverting to a seminar on June 24th where Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) Judge Jacob Wit made a presentation on `Rethinking Criminal Justice,’ Ramkarran delivered a scathing assessment of the present system here.
“It was a timely and important (seminar) because our criminal justice system, like our appeal system, is in a state of collapse. This is no exaggeration because these systems do not deliver justice to the Guyanese citizen in a reasonable time, as provided for in the Constitution. Accused persons are tried years after they are committed to trial. Those on remand have to spend their time in prison. Civil appeals now take about six years to be heard. I hasten to add that this state of affairs is not the fault of judges. They work diligently and under great pressure,” the Senior Counsel said.
He added: “the state of our judicial system was not created by a natural disaster. It is man-made and there is no hint that any man-made solution will ever be entertained. Up to recently the High Court had twelve appointed judges although the full complement is twenty.
Three out of the twelve, twenty-five percent, have recently retired and cannot be replaced because a Judicial Service Commission is not being constituted, although there is no known obstacle to doing so. The Court of Appeal has had only three Judges, out of a complement of five, for over fifteen years. The full complement for the Court of Appeal has been recently increased to nine,” the Senior Counsel said.
Meanwhile, weighing in on this particular issue, Burch-Smith said that the shortcomings which beset the appellate structure are also as a result of there being no JSC in place to carry out its mandate.
On this point he said, “The Court of Appeal is under-resourced because of the absence of the JSC and requires comprehensive reform similar to what was done for the High Court by the Civil Procedure Rules.”
In relation to civil litigation, the Bar Association head said that tremendous effort was made to reform this under the Civil Procedure Rules implemented in 2016; while adding that significant improvements have been made to the general working conditions in all courts.
Against this background Burch-Smith underscored that the Magistracy has also been improved tremendously.
The “failure” to appoint a JSC he said, however, “undermines all these efforts.”
Meanwhile, to Ramkarran’s proposition regarding judge-alone trials, he said that there is no reason why it cannot be part of a reform framework where appropriate.
The JSC has not been reconvened since 2017. When the PPP/C government entered office in August of 2020 this was one of the items on its agenda. To date, despite appeals from the judiciary and other sectors of society the JSC is yet to be reappointed and many excuses have been offered by President Irfaan Ali and Attorney General Anil Nandlall SC.
In his column in the Sunday Stabroek, Ramkarran noted that at the seminar on June 24th where Justice Wit presented, one panelist, Justice Jo-Ann Barlow, remarked that shorter trial periods cannot be attained if the number of judicial officers and support staff are not increased. Justice Barlow said: “It is by the grace of the Almighty that we manage to keep the system afloat.”
Ramkarran, a former two-term Speaker of the National Assembly, noted that the main idea forwarded by Justice Wit was of a pre-trial chamber of a judge, assisted by a master, or a magistrate, to monitor and review cases which have been committed for trial. This pre-trial chamber, Justice Wit has said, will give bail, sifting out the weaker cases, keeping the stronger ones, engaging in plea bargaining, thereby reducing the number that have to be tried. Justice Wit also floated the possibility of “judge-alone” trials.
Ramkarran, who chaired the last major reforms to the Constitution, said on Sunday that Guyana needs a criminal justice system that protects the constitutional rights of the accused by delivering a fair trial within a reasonable time and delivering justice for the victim.
He also fired another salvo at the authorities.
“Many ideas, including the abolition of jury trials, combined with the mechanisms offered by Justice Wit and others, can aid this process and substantially reduce the backlog. But seminars on these matters and articles such as this are currently a total waste of time. The authorities do not care, are not listening and have no intention of doing so”, he lamented.
