By Barbara Gayle,
Staff Reporter
A HIGH Court Judge has expressed concern that most persons charged with murder who came up before the opening session of the Home Circuit Court on Wednesday were on bail.
Mr. Justice Mahadev Dukharan in querying the reason for so many accused being granted bail referred also to the fact that murder was "on the rise."
Bail was granted to some of the accused persons at the end of the preliminary enquiries in the Corporate Area Resident Magistrates' Court this year.
There are 233 cases listed for trial during the term and 133 of them are murder cases.
The judge who officially opened the new session which was marked with the traditional colourful ceremony on King Street, downtown Kingston, said it appeared that the harder they worked "the more the list gets longer and longer".
He asked why so many accused persons charged with murder were on bail. Lorraine Smith, Crown Counsel, said they were new cases from the Resident Magistrates' Courts and she did not have any papers relating to them so she did not know the facts.
The judge said that since there were no papers and the prosecution had no facts, he did not want to order the accused persons remanded in custody.
A court official said that when new cases were sent to the Criminal Registry of the Supreme Court, the notes from the preliminary enquiries which were hand-written had to be typed and such a process took time. The new cases are from the Corporate Area Resident Magistrates' Court and some were sent to the Supreme Court last week, the court official disclosed.
There are 49 new committals, of which 25 are murder cases involving 32 accused persons and 18 of them are on bail. The new cases were mentioned in court yesterday.
Miss Smith, in mentioning the number of cases for trial, said the staff of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions hoped to make a dent this term in "the formidable list". She said that of the 233 cases on the list, 183 were traversed from last term, 49 were new committals and one case was sent from the Court of Appeal for retrial. There are 132 murder cases, six of which are capital murder cases, the others being non-capital. Also, the list has 65 sexual offence cases, 32 of which are rape cases and 25 are carnal abuse cases.
The Hilary session of the Home Circuit Court which opened on January 7 had 245 cases listed for trial but only 58 cases were disposed of when the session ended last week.
