JUSTICE Minister Delroy Chuck has rebuffed calls by attorneys for speedy trial legislation here in Jamaica.

Speaking Wednesday during the virtual opening ceremony marking Inaugural Judiciary Day celebrations for the island’s courts, Chuck made it clear that “this Minister of Justice doesn’t propose to go there”. He said attorneys must play their part to ensure that matters are handled expeditiously.

“It is important that we use moral suasion to ask all the stakeholders — the lawyers in particular, the input from the Ministry of Justice and from the director of public prosecutions — to ensure that we can in fact complete cases within a reasonable time; especially criminal cases, because once the offender is there over an extended period, the stakeholders, especially the family members, start to complain and start to lose interest and feel that justice has not been done, so it’s very important that we really ensure that cases are completed,” the justice minister declared.

Speedy trial legislation mandates that a criminal case must be brought to trial within a specified amount of time.

The Jamaican Constitution guarantees defendants the right to a fair hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial court for both criminal and civil proceedings. Reasonable time, while not defined, is viewed as a period that is not unnecessarily lengthy or prejudicial to the individual’s right to freedom.

As far as judicial time standards go, Chief Justice Bryan Sykes, in announcing the introduction of standards for hearing and trial date certainty in a 2019 address to the nation, said, “Excellent courts rest on three pillars” with trial and hearing date certainty being the primary.

“This means that the trial or hearing takes place on the day it is listed to begin. We no longer set multiple trials for each courtroom as this always leads to adjournments. Unnecessary delays will not be accommodated,” Sykes explained.

In noting that the consequence of hearing and trial date certainty is that cases are disposed of within stated time standards, the chief justice said, for Jamaica, this means disposing of cases within 24 months of entry into the courts. The international standard for this measure is between 92 and 100 per cent. Justice Sykes has set a target of 95 per cent.

Chuck in the meantime said the pace at which matters move through the courts has implications for economic performance.

“The economy is strong but it needs to get much stronger, and for it to get much stronger we have to remove some of the blockage in the system. As I have pointed out at the Administrator General’s Department, when $50 billion in assets are tied up or $5 billion is tied up in the bank because disputes are not resolved, then it has an impact on how well the economy can grow and I have no doubt that in the civil cases in the Supreme Court hundreds of billions of dollars are actually tied up and are not being utilised effectively in the system because litigants are waiting for a judgment, so as we celebrate Judiciary Day, we hope that in the next year or two we can say that significant progress has been made in terms of the completion of matters in the courts,” he noted.

The justice minister, while pointing out that he was aware that “significant progress has been made in the Supreme Court where divorces, probates, no longer take years”, said this was an indication that matters could be dealt with swiftly.

“The vast majority of them [divorces and probates] are now being completed within 12 months, and chief, I am aware that there are quite a few probate and divorce cases that are done within six weeks. So if some can be done within six weeks, most can be done within six weeks, if the attorneys just file the proper documents and there are not referrals and various queries to be sorted out. So the attorneys must play their part,” Chuck declared.

“So in celebrating Judiciary Day we celebrate the successes but we must also ensure that the few weaknesses in the system can be sorted out as we ensure that Jamaica’s justice system becomes one of the best in the world, and I have no doubt that we are on the road there,” he added.

Last month attorney-at-law and chair of lobby group Jamaicans For Justice (JFJ) John Clarke called on the justice minister to establish an equivalent speedy trial legislation for the island while speaking on the JFJ-produced show Let’s Talk Justice. Clarke, in acknowledging the chief justice’s efforts at establishing timelines, said this was not sufficient.

Judiciary Day, which was themed ‘Preserving justice, Honouring History, Preserving the Future’, spotlighted the “rich legacy of Jamaica’s judicial system while reaffirming its vital role in the country’s continued growth and development”. The celebrations, which were observed by all courts islandwide with ceremonial parades, exhibitions, guided tours, and civic observances, aimed to inspire national pride, foster a deeper public understanding of the justice system, and strengthen the connection between the judiciary and the wider society.