CJ: Time for Criminal Division of Appeal Court

WITH the increase in crime and convictions, Chief Justice Sat Sharma feels the time has come for a Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal. Speaking at the ceremonial opening of the new law term yesterday, the Chief Justice pointed out that criminal jurisprudence had grown vastly in complexity over the past 15 years. He said the substantive criminal law has been developing. He added, “with the growing number of complex fraud trials engaging the attention of the courts, the intricacies of documentary evidence and the admissibility of expert evidence from forensic auditors and accountants will come up for close scrutiny.” Sharma said the creation of a Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal, to deal exclusively with the growing number of appeals, had been mooted for some time.

“The time has now come, in my view, to give serious consideration to the creation of a separate division of the Court of Appeal to deal exclusively with criminal appeals. The rationale behind this is that such a division would be staffed primarily with judges who are specialists in criminal law.” CJ Sharma also pointed out that the increase in the volume and complexity in civil litigation, the staggering increase in crime, the increase in judicial review applications, have brought a heavy burden on judges. He said over the last year, 133 judicial review applications were filed in the court. During the court vacation, another 12 were filed. “Since these matters are to be expeditiously dealt with, and most of them are very time consuming, other matters are left to languish in the system. Something drastic has to be done.

The suggestion that a public law court should be established is a simplistic solution, in my view, and that all that would entail would be a removal of all public law matters to one court. This will not solve the problem. I propose to consult with the Law Association and other relevant persons and bodies to ensure a realistic solution is found.” Sharma also complained that judges are handicapped by the archaic method of note-taking. “The fact that judges can, in spite of all these problems, struggle to produce at such an optimum level in order to maintain the integrity of the system of justice intact, is nothing short of a legal miracle. “Groundless and ill-informed attacks made from time to time on the judiciary over the airwaves and other sources are to be ignored. The clear aim is to sensationalise and scandalise,” the Chief Justice noted.