Law Association president, senior counsel Sophia Chote, says she agrees with the Prime Minister that T&T’s justice system is too slow.
On Tuesday night, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley said despite the millions of dollars pumped into the Judiciary, justice in T&T was “unacceptably slow.”
Rowley said in his seven-year tenure as Prime Minister, he has given the Judiciary priority by cutting funds from other projects to ensure hundreds of millions of dollars were allocated to the Judiciary.
“We have increased the numbers of masters and judges, removed from the judicial system 100,000 plus motor car cases, we’re giving demerit points rather than going before judges and magistrates, we’ve cut hundreds of thousands of cases from the system, and I haven’t seen any acceleration of justice in T&T,” the Prime Minister said.
In an interview with Guardian Media yesterday, Chote said while she cannot say how much money was pumped into the Judiciary, she agrees with Rowley’s statements.
“I have not seen an acceleration in the progress of cases. People may quote statistics to say any number of cases may have been concluded within a certain space of time but we have to factor into the contextual position the age of these matters, certainly the pandemic has not helped,” Chote said.
She said in a recent conversation with a colleague who practices family law, she learnt the delays also affect family court matters.
“She was telling me that some cases take as long as four years. I would imagine that is a matter of particular concern because when you have family law cases, you are dealing with people who are essentially in vulnerable positions, where they are going through a divorce or there is a custody battle over a child or parties are disputing property settlements.”
The senior counsel said while this was worrying, delays in the criminal justice system were far worse.
“I have a client who has been awaiting a retrial for I think, 12 years,” she said.
Chote said she believes the Prime Minister was right to demand accountability for the money spent in the Judiciary.
She said she was pleased that these questions were being raised.
“I think when money is invested in any institution, not only the Judiciary, when money is invested in any institution, the stakeholders who use the institution or who are most likely to be participating in this institution’s processes, will want to know that they are getting an improved service and quite frankly, I don’t know that I can say that, from a lawyer’s perspective.”
While she admitted that attorneys contribute to delays, she said focus should be placed on the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.
“Unfortunately, a lot of the blame is often placed on the private bar but we forget that when we talk about the under-resourcing of the Director of Public Prosecutions, that has an impact on the slow pace of the matters proceeding before the courts simply because they don’t have enough personnel, so the delays or adjournments are not only sought by members of the private bar,” Chote said.
Chote said it was not in the best interest of attorneys to prolong a case indefinitely, as they spent a considerable amount of time preparing for cases.
She said she was also looking forward to the return of in-person court hearings, as she hoped this will be able to relieve some of the congestion in the justice system.
