Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

gail.alexan­der@guardian.co.tt

The re­moval of ju­ry tri­als is not an in­fringe­ment on a per­son’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, says At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour.

Speak­ing in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, Ar­mour sup­port­ed that point by de­tail­ing the Privy Coun­cil’s 1978 de­ci­sion on the Ja­maican case of Trevor Stone and the Queen.

Ar­mour did so while pi­lot­ing de­bate on pro­posed leg­is­la­tion to ex­pand the am­bit of the tri­al by judge alone sys­tem. The bill seeks to amend the Ju­ry and Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure Acts.

Ar­mour said it is aimed at re­duc­ing the back­log of cas­es in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem by in­tro­duc­ing ju­ry tri­als as the de­fault po­si­tion for all cap­i­tal and non-cap­i­tal in­dictable mat­ters, “with the op­tion for the ac­cused to ap­ply to the court to be tried by a judge and ju­ry.”

It al­so pro­pos­es re­duced ju­ry sizes and lay as­ses­sors with spe­cial ex­per­tise and qual­i­fi­ca­tions with­in a pool of at­tor­neys to as­sist judges.

Ar­mour said the pan­dem­ic pro­vid­ed chal­lenges and op­por­tu­ni­ties to im­ple­ment mea­sures in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem that have con­tributed to im­proved ef­fi­cien­cies, and to jus­ti­fy their con­tin­ued use - such as the tri­al by judge alone law, “...which has tremen­dous po­ten­tial to re­duce case back­logs.”

From 2019 when the law was pro­claimed, to Jan­u­ary 31, 2023, he said there were 59 com­plet­ed judge alone tri­als and 35 are pend­ing. On an av­er­age, there were two re­quests per month for such tri­als and 13 re­quests in Jan­u­ary 2023 alone.

Ar­mour said the sta­tis­tics were “self-rec­om­mend­ing” of the suc­cess of the 2017 law. But he said sta­tis­tics from the Ju­di­cia­ry show that the crim­i­nal case back­log has con­tin­ued to in­crease.

“Da­ta from the Ju­di­cia­ry in­di­cates for the pe­ri­od Au­gust 1, 2021 to Ju­ly 21, 2022, there were 15,122 crim­i­nal cas­es filed at the dis­trict courts, in­clud­ing 160 cap­i­tal mat­ters, 207 crim­i­nal cas­es filed at the High Courts in Port-of- Spain, San Fer­nan­do and To­ba­go and 232 crim­i­nal cas­es filed at the Fam­i­ly and Chil­dren Di­vi­sion,” he said.

At Ju­ly 31, 2022, there were 885 crim­i­nal mat­ters pend­ing at the High Courts in PoS, San Fer­nan­do and To­ba­go and 389 crim­i­nal mat­ters pend­ing at the Fam­i­ly and Chil­dren Di­vi­sion.

“Da­ta from the ju­di­cia­ry al­so in­di­cat­ed there are 1,119 de­fen­dants in jail await­ing tri­als,” the AG said.

“These sta­tis­tics are con­cern­ing. The Gov­ern­ment has im­ple­ment­ed sig­nif­i­cant re­forms to ad­dress the crim­i­nal case back­log and we recog­nise there’s more that needs to be done on a con­tin­u­ing ba­sis...”

He added that he’ll be re­turn­ing to Par­lia­ment with oth­er mea­sures very short­ly.

Stat­ing that the re­moval of ju­ry tri­als is not an in­fringe­ment on a per­son’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, Ar­mour cit­ed the Ja­maican case.

He not­ed that the Privy Coun­cil dis­missed the ap­peal, af­firm­ing that a Supreme Court judge, “such as our T&T judges,” sit­ting with­out a ju­ry is sim­ply a mat­ter of prac­tice and pro­ce­dure and does not in­volve a fun­da­men­tal right to tri­al by a judge and ju­ry.

Ar­mour said that set­tled prin­ci­ple of law equal­ly ap­plies to T&T.

Ar­mour said ju­ry tri­als re­quire 12 to 18 peo­ple to par­tic­i­pate and some­times go up to months with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of dis­agree­ment, a hung ju­ry or re­tri­al nec­es­sary.

He said the process is lengthy and chal­leng­ing, as of­ten, peo­ple are un­will­ing to be ju­rors and a greater per­cent­age of per­sons present rea­sons against serv­ing.

Ar­mour not­ed a “heinous mur­der” case when he was a young at­tor­ney, when find­ing ju­rors took months be­cause peo­ple were scared. He not­ed ju­rors had to be found on the Ch­aguara­mas beach near where the court was lo­cat­ed.

He said tri­al by judge alone re­duces wait­ing time for tri­als, since ju­ry se­lec­tion isn’t done. Re­sources that might be spent on em­pan­elling ju­rors/al­ter­nates are al­so saved and judges must de­liv­er a ver­dict be­fore ex­piry of 40 days.

Say­ing it pro­vid­ed a more ex­pe­di­tious crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, Ar­mour added, “Some­thing which I do not think a sin­gle woman or man on the streets of this Re­pub­lic will sug­gest is not a de­sired ob­jec­tive.”

The AG in­di­cat­ed that com­ments were sought on the bill, in­clud­ing from the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and Law As­so­ci­a­tion.