Monday, 21 November
Tuesday, 22 November
24 -
Application for bail lasting about half an hour;
Plea and judgment lasting not more than one hour;
if so, will the Government inform this Council why such limited use of courtroom time has occurred and whether such a situation has resulted in unnecessary delays to other court cases awaiting adjudication?
Reply:
President,
The Judiciary has looked into the case referred to. A five months' trial was originally scheduled for the court in question. A week or so before the trial was due to commence on 7 November 1994, the case was adjourned at the request of the Defence. This resulted in a three-week gap in the diary of that court.
The unexpectedly vacant court days were immediately filled by other trials. The three vacant days referred to in the question arose as a result of the adjournment of a refixed trial because the Accused in that second trial insisted on changing his legal representative.
In a further attempt to fill the court's diary, several injunction applications were set down. These were duly disposed of. This left two vacant days for which no suitable cases could be found.
This case illustrates the problems that can arise because the present listing system assures parties of fixed dates for trials. Court diaries are fixed months in advance. If for whatever reason, a case has to be refixed at short notice, or a case runs for a shorter period than expected or is adjourned, it may not always be possible to fill the unexpected gap in the court diary despite the best efforts of the Judiciary.
The Judiciary recognises that there is scope for fine-tuning the listing system to improve judicial efficiency. Various initiatives are being explored to enable the filling of odd slots that unexpectedly arise in Judges' diaries e.g. the possibility of launching an interlocutory running list. Furthermore, the Judiciary is also consulting other relevant parties on how to achieve better case management through firmer control of the process
of trials and refusal of unnecessary adjournments.
End/Wednesday, January 11, 1995
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