CCJ judge: Criminal justice system needs complete overhaul

CARIBBEAN Court of Justice (CCJ) judge Justice Jacob Wit said on Tuesday that rape victims should not be made to wait 14 years for justice, as he urged a complete overhaul of the criminal justice system.

Wit was offering a judicial perspective at the Caricom crime symposium at the Hyatt Regency, Port of Spain.

He began by denying charges levelled by regional prime ministers on Monday that certain judges seemed to "live on the planet Mars" – based on their judgements – as he retorted that the highest appellate judges of some Caribbean countries live in the UK.

Wit said the CCJ will protect people's human rights, despite critics arguing it would not. He said a British academic visiting Guyana this week said people's rights were better protected at the CCJ than at the Privy Council.

Wit said the constitutions of many countries in the region (excluding Trinidad and Tobago) mandated that trials must be fair for all parties concerned.

"The trial should be fair for all – defendant, victims, witnesses and society as a whole. The case shall be afforded a fair hearing, not only the victim."

Wit considered the injustice to a young rape victim awaiting justice for years.

"There are many stories. There are these sexual offences where a girl of 16 is raped and then it takes 16 years or 14 years before that case is tried.

"What kind of justice is that?"

In the period the girl would have grown into a 30-plus-year-old woman and moved on with her life.

"Now she is married. She may have children. She may have never told her husband about what happened to her when she was 16 – and now you have to appear before the court and tell it all over again.

"So it's no wonder that witnesses are not very happy to do that. That means evidence evaporates and therefore a guilty person might be free."

Wit also lamented the plight of witnesses summoned to court.

"They come, they wait for hours, they are sent back. 'Come back next month,' et cetera, et cetera. That is not fair to witnesses."

Wit said trials must be fair to society.

"Take TT. Unfortunately there is a very low detection rate. Of all these murders, it is lower than 20 per cent."

Further, out of those few detected murders, there was an acquittal rate of 60-70 per cent, (equating to a conviction rate as low as 30 per cent). "This is not the way to run a criminal justice system."

He said this system must be "fair, be seen to be fair, and protect the rights of all." The system needed "a thorough overhaul", not a piecemeal one, he urged.

Wit also lamented the case of a murder accused awaiting trial in jail for ten years. He said in the past, bail was not given for murder because these cases came to court quickly, but now this was no longer the case. The award of bail came amid lengthy delays in trials for people deemed innocent until proven guilty

He quoted Chief Justice Ivor Archie as saying recently the whole system was in crisis. Wit recalled the CJ saying 575 people were awaiting trial for murder in TT, and even if ten judges tried only murder cases for the next ten years, such efforts would not clear the backlog in five years.

He made three suggestions to improve the criminal justice system: a better pre-trial sifting out of cases where prosecution was likely to fail for insufficient evidence; more use of plea bargaining; and more use of judge-alone trials.

Wit said the CCJ Academy will host a conference on criminal justice reform in Barbados in October, with a wide range of participants to offer provocative thoughts towards a critical look at the system.