Barbara Gayle, Staff Reporter

Carol Palmer, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Justice. - File

Reporters covering the Corporate Area Criminal Court at Half-Way Tree have been complaining these last few weeks that the acting Senior Resident Magistrate there, Ms. Judith Pusey, has been denying them use of the seats they usually occupy at the front of her courtroom.She has been ordering them instead to sit at the back, among the spectators.

Specific instructions

By contrast, Chief Justice Lensley Wolfe gave specific instructions when arrangements were being made in October 2005 for the Kraal murder trial in the Home CircuitCourt, King Street, downtown Kingston, that proper seating be provided in his courtroom for reporters from the news media who were assigned to cover the trial. They were told to occupy the table and bench at the front of the courtroom, near to the bench occupied by Queen's Counsel, and the reporters worked comfortably from there during the trial, which lasted for 36 days - from October 31 to December 20.

Chief Justice Wolfe himself presided over the trial in which the accused policemen were Senior Superintendent Reneto Adams, Corporal Patrick Coke and Constables Devon Bernard, Shane Lyons, Roderick Collier and Leford Gordon. They were charged with shooting dead Angella Richards, 47; Lowena Thompson, 39; Kirk Gordon and Matthew James, both 29, at a house in Kraal, in the hills of north central Clarendon, on May 7, 2003, without lawful justification. All six policemen were acquitted.

For as long as the oldest retired judges, defence lawyers, prosecutors, court reporters and former police officers can remember, seats to the front of the courtrooms have always been provided in the Resident Magistrates' courts in the Corporate Area of Kingston and St. Andrew, at Sutton Street and at Half-Way Tree and the Home Circuit Court for reporters covering cases there. In some jurisdictions, courthouses and police stations even have special facilities for the news media. Indeed, from colonial times, the presence of reporters to cover court proceedings in Jamaica, and in all other democratic countries of the world, has been generally accepted without question, indeed, even welcomed.

It is well known there are cases which must be heard in private for various reasons, but where the courts are open to the public, and so, to the news media, a judge should not put reporters who are covering them at a disadvantage merely because of a peeve or because a particular reporter has made an error, regardless of how careless or irresponsible it is.

Public court proceedings

Court proceedings in Jamaica are usually open to the public,except in the case of the Gun Court and the Family Court, the proceedings of which are held in camera, to protect the identity of the complainants and the witnesses. Of course, rape, carnal abuse and other sex cases are also tried in camera, for obvious reasons.

But the problem at Courtroom II at the Corporate Area Criminal Court at Half-Way Tree has to do not with the closing to reporters of what should be an open court, but the placing of undue hardships on reporters who cover that court, by denying them facilities that have traditionally been available to them - the provision of seats near the front of the courtroom, from which they can better hear the magistrate, the prosecutor, the police, defence counsel and witnesses.

The reporters complain that acting Senior Resident Magistrate Judith Pusey has been chasing them from the front, ordering them to sit instead, among the spectators in the back of the courtroom. According to one reporter, the RM, in ordering a male reporter last week to sit among the spectators, sought to justify her order by telling him, "You are a private citizen".

True he is, but he is also performing a legitimate public function, as by reporting court proceedings, he is acting on behalf of the island's population of 2.7 million people who cannot fit into the courtroom. Every professional journalist knows that the right of any reporter to cover proceedings in open court is merely that possessed by every member of the public, so the reporter doesn't have to be reminded that he is a private citizen. Indeed, in time and in fact, so are we all.

Undue hardship

The latest issue, as I understand it, began with a report by a media house a few weeks ago, that an extradition case was not heard on the particular day it came up in court because there was no resident magistrate there to deal with it. The truth is that the extradition hearing did not begin because it had been agreed by the court, counsel for the accused and the prosecutors from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions(DPP), representing the requesting state, that it would not start then because the DPP was awaiting documents from the Ministry of Justice.

In the old days, the resident magistrate or the clerk of the courts would have pointed out the error to the offending reporter or to the media house and have them correct it. Some RMs would even have given the errant reporter a chastening tongue lashing or would have caused a letter to be sent to the editor of the offending media house. If the reporter turned out to be just too careless with the facts, he or she would find that the clerk of the courts would no longer be a model of cooperative assistance, in case the reporter wanted gaps filled out in a news story.

In the instant case, reporters who had been covering Court II were instead suddenly told by a member of the court staff that they would no longer be given allegations in cases and would only be given the name of the accused, the age and the charge. The allegations are often read out in court so if they cannot hear from where they are now sitting, they cannot ask the clerk of the courts for such vital information.

The reporters complain that they cannot follow the proceedings from where they sit at the back of the courtroom because there are no microphones in the courtroom. Now, that borders on the imposition of undue hardship on the reporters covering Court II.

Consider the case of an influential political person being tried in Court II. Despite the best efforts of the police, his supporters are going to pack the spectators' seats. How, in all fairness, are reporters expected to do their job in such a hostile environment? For a start, sitting there, reporters are going to be distracted, if not constantly harassed or threatened. Then they are going to have difficulty hearing what the magistrate, the prosecutor, defence counsel and witnesses say, because microphones are not installed in the courtroom. It is not unusual for witnesses or relatives of complainants to be threatened by friends of the accused, within the precincts of the court. So to expose reporters, by having them sit among the spectators, is simply not fair. A senior lawyer commented that there are many times when accused persons cannot even hear what is taking place in the court and have to be asking lawyers or the police what was said.

Mrs. Carol Palmer, permanent secretary, Ministry of Justice, sought to offer an explanation of the matter at a news briefing on Tuesday. She said that the court system, as it exists, was not geared to accommodate members of the media. This is true, in terms of numbers, because of the expansion of media houses and the increased number of reporters in the last several years. She went on: "We have to recognise that our justice system and the operations of the court were set up for the parties to the dispute and their attorneys, the judge sitting in adjudication to the matter, and anybody else was considered a spectator."

Press table

This is simply not true, as for donkeys' years reporters enjoyed the privilege of having a press table or seats to the front of the courtroom and this was acknowledged by the RMs, clerks of the courts, police and lawyers. Anybody who has had to do with the courts in recent memory, certainly for the last 50 years or so, can attest to that. The number of seats may not now be adequate to accommodate all reporters who, on a given day, may turn out in droves to cover a case that is particularly interesting to the public, but the fact remains that the seats are still there.

The issue is that Miss Pusey has ordered the reporters not to sit there again but to sit instead, among the spectators. A similar situation exists at Gordon House where these days, there usually are more reporters than seats, but the few seats are still there.

Mrs. Palmer was quoted as saying that very little could be done to address the situation as, until the reform of the justice system was completed, the judges do not have an option. But this can't be right as the same person who gave the directive for the removal ofthe reporters can simply rescind it.

The courts, in this day of transparency, should not resort to that form of harassment to get back at reporters who commit errors whether through irresponsibility or carelessness. That form of punishment smacks of the justice meted out in Zimbabwe or some banana republics and does not befit Jamaica in 2007.

This reporter holds no brief for the offending reporter but everybody in this world makes mistakes - judges, lawyers, doctors, the police - and in the case of some judges and some resident magistrates, their mistakes sometimes cause more harm than those made by a careless or incompetent reporter, as often, they put innocent people in prison and ruin their reputation.

So, that is why there is a Court of Appeal in Jamaica and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, in London, remains, up till now, Jamaica's highest court of appeal - to correct mistakes made by judges. And when these higher courts rule, the high court judge or the resident magistrate who is found to be in error, is never sent to the back of the class.

Censorship

What is disturbing about the complaints from the Half-Way Tree Court is that despite the wide publicity the issue has been given, neither Chief Justice Lensley Wolfe nor Attorney-General A. J. Nicholson, Minister of Justice, has issued any directive to restore the most basic of facilities to the court reporters. The continued denial of this facility to reporters only serves to raise suspicions of corruption, unfounded and baseless though they be, in the justice system. The issue of justice is high on the list of complaints that the poor people of this country have against the state. The perception is that there are two standards of justice, one for the rich, influential and powerful, and something far inferior, for the poor and the powerless. The justice system, specifically the courts and the police, are the first area of contact citizens usually have with government, and to hear ordinary, decent, law-abiding citizens tell it, the contact rarely ever inspires confidence.

And, of course, when the United States government notes in its human rights report that what is happening in Court II borders on censorship, we are going to be the first to feel upset.

Members of the Jamaican Justice Reform Task Force who have set their sights on a comprehensive reform of the Jamaican justice system, need to note this malignant aberration and make sure that in the interests of justice, it is excised from Court II and never surfaces again anywhere in the nation's court system.

The fact is that some judges, especially some RMs - men and women - behave in such undignified fashion and so lacking in decorum in court, virtual higglers on the bench, that quite often, the presence of a reporter, easily spotted from the seat of justice, can be a necessary restraining influence, even if the reporter does not write the sometimes incredible utterances that emanate from the mouths of these ministers of justice.