Six years after the Government proposed the introduction of live-streaming of select criminal and civil court cases, Jamaica’s Chief Justice Bryan Sykes says it is now time for a full embrace of live broadcast of “criminal and civil trials and appeals as part of just not accountability but public education”.

Addressing the 2024 Conference of Chief Justices and Heads of Judiciaries of the Caribbean on Wednesday at AC Marriott Hotel in St Andrew, Justice Sykes, in noting that the proceedings of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and the Caribbean Court of Justice are available to the public, said “So too should the proceedings of our courts, particularly our appellate courts.”

Noting that “judicial independence is not a shield or immunity from scrutiny by members of the public or even the legislature or interested parties” the chief justice emphasised that, “the concept of open justice, where our courts are open to all whether to attend in person or to give access electronically, is one practical manifestation of that principle”.

Said Justice Sykes; “While we might not be able to prevent persons from making mischief, what it will do is to provide real-time, reliable information to a substantial body of persons who can fill the space with accurate narratives based on information that they have received from an authoritative source.”

He, in the meantime, noted that the security concerns of all involved must be weighed.

“I fully appreciate that there is an increasing concern about security, but in addressing the security issue we have to strike the appropriate balance between, on the one hand, security for the courts, the judges, the staff and the court users, and on the other hand, the right of the public to enter any court at any time they feel to see what is happening inside and to report on anything that they might find either positive or negative as the case may be,” Justice Sykes said.

In April this year, Privy Council President Lord Reed of Allermuir pointed out that the apex court has made a concerted effort to find ways of assuring the public that cases are not decided based on the personal views of judges.

This assurance, he said, manifests itself in the liberty given to individuals to access the proceedings of the court, which has seen some 100,000 visitors every year.

Furthermore, hearings are live-streamed as part of a hybrid approach.

Lord Reed was delivering the distinguished lecture hosted by The University of the West Indies, Mona Faculty of Law and Norman Manley and Hugh Wooding law schools’ Class of ’97.

In September 2021 the opening proceedings of the Klansman gang trial were streamed live. The final summations and verdicts in March 2023 were also live-streamed. Several judgments in other matters of high public interest have also been streamed at both the Supreme and Appeal Court levels.

In 2018 some members of the legal fraternity expressed support for the proposal mooted by the Government to live-stream select cases as a means of promoting transparency in the judicial system.

At the time, Justice Minister Delroy Chuck had announced that discussions were underway with Chief Justice Sykes, then Court of Appeal Acting President Dennis Morrison, and several parish judges across the island on the matter.

“This [accountability] must exist in the courts [so] that they function efficiently and that people can see how justice is being delivered,” Chuck said at the opening of the Port Maria Justice Centre in St Mary.