A HIGH Court judge yesterday described as "frightening", the large backlog of murder cases on the court list for the Hilary session of the Home Circuit.
Justice David Pitter made the comment when he opened the new session which has 222 cases, of which 112 are murder cases.
The judge called on the authorities to appoint more judges and make more courtrooms and staff available to dispose of the backlog of cases.
In referring to the large number of cases on the court list the judge remarked that "those for murder are frightening."
"It is of great concern on the part of the public and judges to see that such cases are disposed of with dispatch," Justice Pitter said. He pointed out that term after term it was repeated that the backlog of cases was too large. He said that to tackle the problem seriously he would have to ask for the co-operation of everyone and that included defence counsel.
To reduce the backlog, he said, there must be far-reaching solutions. There are now four criminal courts at the Home Circuit Court, King Street, downtown Kingston, but there were more cases than courtrooms, he said. He emphasised that in order to alleviate the situation there must be more courtrooms, the number of judges increased significantly and an increase in the attendant staff. "Then and only then can we make a significant dent in the arrears, Justice Pitter said.
The spotlight, he said, was on murder cases, pointing out that each one took at least a week to be tried, the complex murder cases taking far longer.
Attorney-at-law Lloyd McFarlane pledged co-operation on behalf of the private bar. He said he hoped the powers that be would give the court system the type of assistance it needed to deal with the backlog. Mr. McFarlane said that a lawyer should not be cited for contempt of court because he was late for court. He said lateness was not the real reason for the delay because when a case was adjourned 12 times, at least 10 of those times, it was the prosecution which had asked for adjournment.
Justice Pitter said that lawyers should be punctual because too often there were situations where the judge was sitting in court and counsel were elsewhere. He said lawyers should not be absent from court without alerting the court as to what was happening.
Georgiana Fraser, Crown Counsel, said there were 37 new cases and 185 traversed cases on the trial list. She said the traversed list had 48 sexual offence cases and 112 murder cases. The new cases include 24 sexual offence cases and nine murder cases.
