Ke­jan Haynes

Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie says he’s not op­posed to crit­i­cism of the bench in prin­ci­ple but is al­so re­mind­ing re­gion­al lead­ers that they too must all work to­geth­er to re­duce crime lev­els.

He made the com­ment on day two of the Cari­com Crime Sym­po­sium at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, as he al­so said he was hap­py with the sym­po­sium’s recog­ni­tion of crime as be­ing at least, in part, a pub­lic health is­sue, say­ing this is the ap­proach and phi­los­o­phy the ju­di­cia­ry has had for some time.

“My main hope is that this is not just talk, but that this will con­tin­ue,” he told re­porters.

“Go­ing for­ward, I sense from some of the things that we’ve heard from our re­gion­al lead­ers, that there is that com­mit­ment. So, I look for­ward to work­ing not just with the ex­ec­u­tive but al­so fel­low Ju­di­cia­ries in the Caribbean.”

St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves opened day two of the sym­po­sium once again rais­ing is­sues with the slow pace of re­gion­al jus­tice, hint­ing that part of the talks at the event could be to have gov­ern­ments do some­thing about it.

Gon­salves was force­ful in his com­ments, say­ing there were too many de­lays in the sys­tem.

“I say to my brethren on the bench, they have to start to con­trol their courts again. But too many judges have al­lowed too many lawyers who prac­tice crim­i­nal law to con­trol the court sys­tem un­der the guise of pro­tect­ing the rights of the ac­cused,” Gon­salves said.

He ac­knowl­edged that al­though some­one is en­ti­tled, con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly, to the pre­sump­tion of in­no­cence and a fair tri­al be­fore an in­de­pen­dent tri­bunal with­in a rea­son­able time, they should not take a long time and “give ad­journ­ments up­on ad­journ­ments.”

“Wit­ness­es mi­grate, mem­o­ries fade, and a lot of times you have to with­draw the pros­e­cu­tion,” he said.

Gon­salves spoke ex­ten­sive­ly about the slow pace of jus­tice and crit­i­cised lawyers and judges who con­sis­tent­ly seek de­lays.

“De­lay is part of the de­fence,” he said.

Speak­ing to re­porters im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter Gon­salves’ speech, Chief Jus­tice Archie said he doesn’t be­lieve ju­di­cia­ries are im­mune to crit­i­cism.

“I don’t think any ju­di­cia­ry in the re­gion, in­clud­ing ours, is do­ing what it needs to do per­fect­ly,” Archie said.

“But I think one of the things that peo­ple of­ten lose sight of is that the ju­di­cia­ry de­pends on in­put from so many oth­er stake­hold­ers to do its job. So, I think we all have to be per­form­ing op­ti­mal­ly, if you are re­al­ly go­ing to im­prove the jus­tice sys­tem.”

He said he wel­comes re­spect­ful dis­cus­sions be­tween the ju­di­cia­ry and the ex­ec­u­tive that don’t in any way com­pro­mise the in­de­pen­dence of both par­ties.

“I think one of the mis­con­cep­tions his­tor­i­cal­ly has been that be­cause we are in­de­pen­dent, then we can’t talk to each oth­er. Well, what that en­gen­ders is that you live in si­los, and there’s a lot of mis­un­der­stand­ing and so pri­or­i­ties, bud­gets, those things are mis­placed, or per­haps not op­ti­mal­ly ad­dressed,” the CJ not­ed.

He ac­knowl­edged the point that Gon­salves made about ad­journ­ments.

“But some­times that hap­pens be­cause there are nec­es­sary in­puts for all process­es, such as foren­sic ev­i­dence and state­ments from the po­lice, lo­ca­tion of wit­ness­es. So there has to be a bal­ance, there has to be a bal­ance be­tween the rights of the ac­cused and the rights of vic­tims. Do we al­ways get that bal­ance per­fect? I sup­pose not,” he mused.

He ac­knowl­edged there could al­so be more ro­bust case man­age­ment.

He said from his per­spec­tive, the Ju­di­cia­ry has been putting the process and tech­no­log­i­cal changes in place, adding with the di­rec­tion of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, there’s new leg­is­la­tion com­ing through to speed up the crim­i­nal jus­tice process, in­clud­ing the elim­i­na­tion of pre­lim­i­nary in­quiries.

He con­ced­ed in the past there was a lax cul­ture re­gard­ing ad­journ­ments, say­ing it was one of the things his of­fice was seek­ing to ad­dress “es­pe­cial­ly with the crim­i­nal pro­ce­dure rules and the struc­tures that we are putting in.”

“There is ex­ist­ing leg­is­la­tion, which is be­ing tweaked at the mo­ment. I ex­pect. I don’t want to speak on be­half of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, but I ex­pect that it will be com­ing in­to Par­lia­ment soon for amend­ment and procla­ma­tion.”

Speak­ing on day one of the sym­po­sium, Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter had called for a re­gion­al foren­sics lab, where gov­ern­ments will pool re­sources and train­ing to im­prove the al­ready over­whelmed sys­tem.

Yes­ter­day, CJ Archie said he saw no rea­son in prin­ci­ple why the re­gion could not pool re­sources, but not­ed to have one unit could raise lo­gis­ti­cal is­sues like who would pay the li­on’s share for re­sources and where it would be lo­cat­ed (al­though he im­me­di­ate­ly sug­gest­ed one of the larg­er ju­ris­dic­tions like Ja­maica or T&T).

Mot­t­ley al­so sug­gest­ed a ro­ta­tion of judges to avoid too much fa­mil­iar­i­ty be­tween judges and lawyers. But Archie be­lieves that could be more prob­lem­at­ic.

“Be­cause every time you move a judge, they move in­to a dif­fer­ent rules en­vi­ron­ment, a dif­fer­ent tech­no­log­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment, dif­fer­ent sup­port struc­tures with­in the in­sti­tu­tion. So there’ll be a learn­ing curve. And then if it’s to be done on­ly for a short pe­ri­od like a six months to a year, then what hap­pens? How do you man­age the judges’ dock­ets as they move in and out?”

He sug­gest­ed in­stead that if there was a par­tic­u­lar­ly sen­si­tive mat­ter, of a po­lit­i­cal na­ture, where it was felt it would be dif­fi­cult to per­suade the pub­lic that it would be han­dled in­de­pen­dent­ly, on­ly then might one con­sid­er a judge from an­oth­er ju­ris­dic­tion.

Still, he im­me­di­ate­ly coun­tered his point by not­ing that is prob­a­bly a “tricky road” be­cause it could im­ply there is a lack of con­fi­dence in judges.

“It’s a bit of an acute prob­lem in small so­ci­eties,” he said, not­ing that in his ex­pe­ri­ence, judges in the re­gion have con­duct­ed them­selves in a man­ner that con­tin­ues to demon­strate their in­de­pen­dence.

He al­so de­fend­ed re­la­tion­ships be­tween judges and lawyers, say­ing judges would have been lawyers and would have had pro­fes­sion­al re­la­tion­ships, or friend­ships, with lawyers.

“My ex­pe­ri­ence over 25 years as a judge is that peo­ple know where to draw the lines in terms of what they dis­cuss. Most of us, as judges, are care­ful about how we so­cialise. I think it’s a lit­tle more chal­leng­ing when our col­leagues who are at­tor­neys are al­so politi­cians,” he ex­plained.