By Robert Andre Emmanuel
The Senate has officially made having criminal proceedings undertaken by Judges Alone a permanent feature of the Antigua and Barbuda judicial system.
The Bill, which was a key recommendation of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court and former Chief Justice, Dame Janice Pereira, will now head to the Governor General’s desk for his official assent.
Antigua and Barbuda now joins Trinidad and Tobago, the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, Belize and a few other Caribbean countries in implementing the measure which will reportedly reduce case backlogs in the country’s justice system, especially in select offences.
“This piece of legislation did work in a very positive way by addressing a number of matters within the High Court of Justice and the legislation, although it allows for trial by Judge Alone, there are considerations where you have to have the consent of the defendant,” Senator Samantha Marshall said, as she introduced the Bill into the Senate.
The Bill’s sunset clause (a measure introduced into an Act of Parliament to limit its effectiveness up to a certain date) was extended twice by the government as they underwent consultations with members of the legal fraternity—especially members of the Antigua and Barbuda Bar Association.
“In any assizes, you could have easily 50 to 60 matters set on the assizes, but because of the system—and because you had to have a trial by jury for the majority of those cases—the real thing is that you could only decide 10 to 15 cases during an assize, which left a number of matters that just kept rolling over and rolling over.
“There was no justice for those persons, those victims who were affected, and there was an unnecessarily prolonged delay for individuals who were charged with the offences, so you can’t just look at the fact that you have the victims, you have to look at the constitutional rights of the defendants who must be heard, and that should be done within a reasonable time,” Senator Marshall added.
Senator Shawn Nicholas, in her response, suggested that if the law is to be made permanent, then all persons, regardless of the type of offence, should have the right to choose whether they want to be tried by Judge Alone, and she called for a review of the Judge Only trials in the future.
“There are those persons who will talk about the demerits of the jury system, but we cannot fool ourselves as there is still merit in the jury system, and when we are talking about fair trials, there are some people who still feel that to have a fair trial, it must be before a jury.
So…yes, you are making it a permanent feature of our legal system, but there should be that option; [Judge Only trials] should not be mandatory in all cases, but persons should have the option to say whether or not they will go before a jury.
“But to say whether or not [judge-only trials] work, we believe that it has been working because it has been tried and tested, and my thinking is, make it permanent, but for review over time,” Senator Nicholas expressed.
The Bill also removes a loophole in the Judge Only trial legislation where inchoate offences could not be tried before a Judge Only—as seen in the Ray John case.
