Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie has warned that the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is on the verge of col­lapse. 

Pre­sent­ing sta­tis­tics for the High Court Crim­i­nal Di­vi­sion in his an­nu­al ad­dress on the open­ing of the 2020/2021 Law Term, yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Archie not­ed that while the Ju­di­cia­ry was able to dis­pose of 97 in­dictable cas­es, de­spite lim­i­ta­tions due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, on­ly 12 in­dict­ments for cas­es had been filed by the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) over the past year.

Archie said: "We can take no com­fort in the sta­tis­tics of a clear­ance rate (ra­tio of cas­es filed to dis­posed) of 800 per cent."

"It hides a dis­tress­ing truth which is the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is near col­lapse ow­ing to fac­tors be­yond the Ju­di­cia­ry's con­trol," Archie added. 

While Archie ad­mit­ted that the dis­po­si­tion rate was af­fect­ed by dif­fi­cul­ties in safe­ly host­ing ju­ry tri­als dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and by a short­age of judges caused by pro­mo­tions to the Court of Ap­peal, he sug­gest­ed that there was no ex­cuse for the de­lay in fil­ing in­dict­ments, which is the process re­quired to have a case join the long list of cas­es await­ing tri­al in the High Court af­ter a pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry is com­plet­ed. 

Archie stat­ed that through im­prove­ments in the Ju­di­cia­ry's court re­port­ing and tran­scrip­tion de­part­ment, the Ju­di­cia­ry was able to elim­i­nate its long­stand­ing de­lay in pro­vid­ing tran­scripts for the in­dict­ments to the DPP's Of­fice. 

"It can't be that," Archie said, as he al­so ques­tioned the lim­it­ed use of plea bar­gain­ing and max­i­mum sen­tence in­di­ca­tions (MSIs) for per­sons wish­ing to plead guilty to of­fences and avoid a tri­al. 

In his re­port­ing on the Ju­di­cia­ry's sta­tis­tics, Archie not­ed that fil­ings and dis­po­si­tions in the Court of Ap­peal, High Court Civ­il Di­vi­sion, and the Fam­i­ly and Chil­dren Court were all low­er in 2019/2020 com­pared to 2018/2019. How­ev­er, he not­ed that be­cause of the pro­por­tion­al de­crease in both, there was a neg­li­gi­ble ef­fect on the over­all clear­ance rate for the di­vi­sions. 

He did boast that the dis­po­si­tion of non-con­tentious pro­bate cas­es had risen by 22 per cent large­ly due to im­prove­ments by the Ju­di­cia­ry over the past few years. 

Dur­ing his speech, Archie sought to ad­dress crit­ics of the Ju­di­cia­ry's on­go­ing move to sus­pend al­most all phys­i­cal hear­ings dur­ing the pan­dem­ic in favour of vir­tu­al hear­ings. 

"Every­thing we do in the Ju­di­cia­ry is da­ta-dri­ven and based on re­search and the best avail­able sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge," he said, as he not­ed that re­cent rapid ex­pan­sion of the video con­fer­enc­ing for hear­ings was fa­cil­i­tat­ed by Ju­di­cia­ry's ef­forts to im­prove and mod­ern­ize the or­gan­i­sa­tion even be­fore the pan­dem­ic. 

Archie al­so dis­missed claims that judges would have dif­fi­cul­ties in as­sess­ing the de­meanour of wit­ness­es, who tes­ti­fy vir­tu­al­ly from ex­ter­nal lo­ca­tions as op­posed to be­fore them in the court­room. 

"In any event, nu­mer­ous stud­ies have con­firmed that even trained pro­fes­sion­als are not sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter than a flip of a coin in de­ter­min­ing from de­meanour, whether a wit­ness is telling the truth," Archie said. 

While Archie not­ed that the Ju­di­cia­ry was cur­rent­ly in the process of hold­ing con­sul­ta­tions with stake­hold­ers on fa­cil­i­tat­ing ju­ry tri­als and some in-per­son hear­ings, while pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions for the pan­dem­ic are in place, Archie en­cour­aged re­mand­ed pris­on­ers to utilise judge-alone tri­als. 

Stat­ing that much crit­i­cism of such tri­als was un­found­ed, Archie point­ed to the fact that of the 14 judge-alone tri­als done since the start of the pan­dem­ic, three re­sult­ed in con­vic­tions, sev­en in not guilty ver­dicts, two in guilty pleas, and two were abort­ed due to un­avoid­able cir­cum­stances. 

Dur­ing the speech, Archie main­tained his tra­di­tion of ad­vo­cat­ing for more ad­min­is­tra­tive and fi­nan­cial au­ton­o­my for the Ju­di­cia­ry.

While Archie not­ed that the or­gan­i­sa­tion had at­tempt­ed nu­mer­ous ini­tia­tives to im­prove its per­for­mance, he claimed that it was reg­u­lar­ly stymied by bu­reau­cra­cy. 

Archie not­ed that al­though Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert re­it­er­at­ed the Gov­ern­ment's com­mit­ment to fa­cil­i­tate the con­stant re­quest in his 2015 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, the Ex­ec­u­tive is yet to re­spond to rec­om­men­da­tions to fa­cil­i­tate its de­sired au­ton­o­my, which was com­mis­sioned by him and pre­pared by the Na­tion­al Cen­tre for State Courts and the lo­cal Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP) of­fice, since 2016. 

He sug­gest­ed that the Ju­di­cia­ry's track record of mak­ing the best of lim­it­ed re­sources should but­tress the ar­gu­ment in favour of au­ton­o­my. 

"I can on­ly hope it would dri­ve home the point that we can be trust­ed to man­age ef­fi­cient­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly in the cur­rent na­tion­al en­vi­ron­ment of se­vere­ly strained re­sources," Archie said. 

Archie al­so sought to giv­en an up­date on court fa­cil­i­ties across the coun­try that are cur­rent­ly un­der ren­o­va­tion. 

He not­ed that the re­lo­ca­tion of the High Court Civ­il Di­vi­sion from the Hall of Jus­tice to an area of the In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Cen­tre, which pre­vi­ous­ly housed Par­lia­ment while the Red House was be­ing ren­o­vat­ed, was de­layed due to fi­nanc­ing is­sues. It is now set to be com­plet­ed in the next few months. 

The re­lo­ca­tion will fa­cil­i­tate the con­ver­sion of civ­il court­rooms at the Hall of Jus­tice to host on­ly crim­i­nal tri­als and help re­duce the back­log of crim­i­nal cas­es be­fore the High Court.