Case of justice delayed

WE FIND it tiresome to be repeating the time-worn adage that justice delayed is justice denied. The truth of this saying is so obvious and so widely accepted that it should become an instinctive part of the psyche of all those officials engaged in the administration of justice. Over the years, we have had reason to cite it when our courts became overloaded with a backlog of cases and the delivery of justice was unduly retarded. It is somewhat distressing then to find that the necessity of resolving matters before our courts within reasonable time is yet to be fully appreciated by judicial officers and that justice is still being denied to citizens because of inordinate delays in hearing and deciding cases.

The Preliminary Inquiry (PI) into larceny and fraud charges against policeman Hardeo Sinanan is a particularly bad example of this kind of delay. Sinanan was arrested in September 1994 on two charges and his case before the magistrate is yet to be completed having been called a total of 84 times! Between 1994 and 2000, the policeman appreared at the PI 37 times. In our “modern day” times,  we find this record unbelievable. We must now wonder how many cases such as this are still languishing before the lower courts. Surely it requires an investigation by the Chief Justice or, at least, the Chief Magistrate if only to determine what went wrong and how a travesty like this can be avoided in the future. It was not until July 2000, six years and 37 hearings after the inquiry started, that the prosecution announced it would prefer to proceed by way of “paper committal” but that proposal was apparently rejected by the court and the matter dragged on for another three years and 47 hearings.

What in these simple charges of larceny and fraud laid against a policeman could have produced such a marathon inquiry? McNicolls should be anxious to find the answer if he is to ensure that such a travesty does not happen again. The matter came before Magistrate Ayres-Caesar in June 2002 and closed in July 2003 when Sinanan’s attorney submitted that the inquiry should be stopped because of the inordinate delay. However, it was not until May 2004, ten months later, that Ayres-Caesar delivered an oral ruling, dismissing the submissions and calling on Sinanan to answer the charges. This can hardly be the kind of performance we expect from our courts, particularly when the accused, who must be presumed innocent, has been suspended from his job and his earnings reduced pending the outcome of charges against him.

In the case of Sinanan, a husband and father of four children, he was suspended from duties three weeks after his arrest, losing one quarter of his salary and all his allowances. The suspended policeman said he has suffered prejudice and hardship by his continued suspension and the withholding of part of his salary and loss of his allowances. It is scandalous, in our view, for a preliminary inquiry into such simple and straightforward charges should drag on for eight years before a decision is delivered. Judicial officers must be more sensitive to the truth of the old adage and to the possibility that innocent persons may suffer severe and lasting hardships when justice is unduly delayed.