Barbara Gayle, Staff Reporter

In an effort to ensure that the criminal courts run smoothly during the term, Justice Kay Beckford has called on prosecutors and defence lawyers to ensure that incomplete cases are not put on the trial list.

The judge said on Wednesday that she observed that cases were being put on the trial list when they could not be tried. She stressed that, whenever a case was placed on the trial list, such a case should be ready for trial.

She was of the view that it was more usual than unusual that matters were put down on the trial list when they were not ready for trial.

The judge made the comment in the Home Circuit Court when she queried why the murder case of Clayton Grant was listed for trial.

The court was informed that the police had difficulty locating the two witnesses in the case. The police had just received information in relation to one of the witnesses and now had to go to a particular parish in search of that witness.

Defence counsel, Lynden Wellesley, who is representing Grant, told the judge that the case was a retrial and he had not received the notes of evidence of the previous trial. Mr. Wellesley disclosed that the trial date was set in his absence.

Grant's case was set for mention on February 23.

Apologised to jurers

The judge, after realising there was no case for the jurors to try in her court, apologised to them and asked them to return to court on Monday. She said they should not regard what took place in court as a waste of time because "as some of you know when you deal with human beings things do not always go right".

The Home Circuit Court is faced with a huge backlog of cases and, term after term, more than 100 cases are traversed.