It is hardly likely that it was contrived, so it is merely a matter of coincidence. But it is highly symbolic that the disclosure that Earl Pratt is to be released from prison, as was reported by this newspaper on Saturday, broadlycoincided with the formal launch of a project to overhaul the Jamaican justice system.

Earl Pratt was one half of a duo - the other being Ivan Morgan - who came to symbolise, perhaps unfairly, the things that were wrong in the administration of justice in Jamaica. Moreover, their names, Pratt and Morgan, are attached to one of Jamaica's most famous cases; one that has had reverberations across the Caribbean where rulings of the Privy Council are, if not binding, highly persuasive.

Pratt and Morgan were convicted of murder 30 years ago. They killed a man named Junior Bissick. Their conviction was never successfully challenged.

However, in 1994, in its famous ruling in the oft-quoted Pratt and Morgan case, the Privy Council, which remains Jamaica's court of last resort, held that they could no longer be hanged because they had spent far too long on death row. It was then that the British-based judges put in place the five-year timeline for the entire appeal process for convicted killers to be completed and executions carried or death sentences be commuted to life in prison. Beyond five years, the Privy Council ruled, the wait on death row becomes cruel and inhuman punishment, contrary to the guarantees of the Jamaican constitution.

Since then Jamaica has been unable to meet the five-year benchmark obtained in Pratt and Morgan, which the authorities say has to do with its impracticality and the ability of convicts and smart lawyers to stretch out appeals. Critics insist, however, that the delays have more to do with the inefficiencies in the justice system, including the failure of the Government to fund it properly.

There have been spin-offs from Pratt and Morgan, not least being the impetus it gave regional governments to pursue the creation of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) and for Jamaica's withdrawal from the Optional Protocol of the United Human Rights Commission, thus cutting an avenue of appeal for Jamaicans, which had largely been utilised by murder convicts. Moreover,Pratt and Morgan was the start of a series of rulings by the Privy Council eroding the efficacy of the death penalty in the Caribbean.

But perhaps more important, what may be regarded in some quarters, and many will insist with unassailable logic, as legal activism by judges in Britain, Pratt and Morgan also forced people to think more seriously about the state of justice in Jamaica; not so much about the quality of the judiciary, but the infrastructure within which they have to operate.

Chief Justice Wolfe suggested that the greater part of the problem in the courts has to do with lack of funding. Perhaps. But there is also a mindset, a need for genuine belief by those in the system in the higher principles of justice and in respect - for all people.