The backlog of more than 3,500 cases in the Coroner's Court is primarily the result of a pile up in mostly non-criminal cases and a lack of witnesses for others, according to Justice Minister Senator A.J. Nicholson.

Mr. Nicholson, who is also the Attorney-General, was responding to questions from Opposition member Clive Mullings during Wednesday night's session of Parliament's Standing Finance Committee.

"The tradition has been sadly in Jamaica that once the persons have been buried the witnesses are not interested in going anywhere again and they don't," the Justice Minister said while admitting to the large number of cases before the court.

He continued: "Secondly, jurors rarely wish to go to cases in Coroner's Court. They believe that it is not 'big court'. And, between the absence of witnesses and the difficulty to get jurors, the cases - as they would say - 'back up!' So the Coroner can't do anything about it."

Senator Nicholson said that, under current legislations jurors cannot be drawn from certain groups of professionals, such as civil servants, public servants and medical practitioners, and that this has been creating some of the problems for the Coroner's Court and other courts in general. However, he said this legislation would be addressed in the current judicial transformation programme.

Backlog could be cut

The Justice Minister added that the current backlog could be cut further if magistrates had a coroner's inquest while doing preliminary inquiries into a case. He noted that efforts were already being taken to do this and that both his ministry and Chief Justice Lensley Wolfe were taking further steps to weed out cases that will not be heard by the Coroner.

However Mr. Mullings, in response to the Attorney-General's answers, said there was also a need to employ more magistrates to clear the backlog. He surmised that the pool of magistrates could be expanded if qualified court clerks were promoted to magistrates and law school graduates were used to fill the clerks' positions.

Senator Nicholson dismissed the point without explanation.