Barbara Gayle, Staff Reporter

Supreme Court judge Bryan Sykes has called on the Director of Public Prosecutions to throw out cases on the Home Circuit Court list which have no prospect of convictions to assist in reducing the huge backlog.

Shortly after he opened the Michaelmas session which was marked with a colourful ceremony in Justice Square, downtown Kingston, yesterday morning, the judge entered the courtroom where he made the special plea. Some of the cases have been on the court list since 2004 and most of the accused are in custody.

The judge, in expressing concern about the pile-up of cases cluttering the court list term after term, said it would be impossible to dispose of the 251 cases scheduled for trial this term.

The term ends on December 15 and there are 139 murder cases and 86 sexual offence cases on the list.

Pre-trial conferences

Justice Sykes also called for steps to be taken for pre-trial conferences to be held so that the admissibility of evidence and exhibits could be dealt with. The judge pointed out that at times during trials, juries were sent out of court for three to six days for those issues to be decided.

He called on lawyers to actively consider guilty pleas when they were appropriate. The judge was optimistic that sentencing options and plea-bargaining legislation to come on stream could also reduce the number of cases for trial.

Justices Sykes noted that in the United States, 84 per cent of the cases in the Federal Court were disposed of without trial, while in Jamaica, at least 74 per cent of the cases were sent to trial.

The previous term had 221 cases but only 45 cases were disposed. The other cases were traversed to this session which has 61 new cases.

Lisa Palmer, acting Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions, said that insufficient jurors also contributed to the backlog. She said cases were transferred from other Circuit courts because there were situations in which juries were being tampered with or tainted.

On behalf of the private Bar, defence lawyer Tom Tavares-Finson pledged cooperation to reduce the backlog.