Lots of work to do before considering CCJ as final court

THE EDITOR, Madam:

I am writing with reference to the article, ‘Rev Gregory urges Gov’t to make CCJ final Court of Appeal’, published in The Gleaner on April 4.

I respect Rev Gregory’s proposal, but many Jamaicans want a progressive and a democratic Constitution that the people govern themselves, a parliamentary republican system. Our amended Constitution is not at that stage, yet.

The Charter (Amended) Constitution, 2015 still has entrenched ‘general savings law clauses’ that afford immunity from constitutional challenge to all laws that were in force at the time of Independence. It is time to retrench those ‘clauses’.

Yes, we need to have our own final court of appeal, but it is more important that our judicial system prevents procedural errors (fatal errors).

On November 2, 1993, the Lords of UK’s Privy Council, in the case Pratt v. A-G for Jamaica judgment said “it was unconstitutional in Jamaica to execute a prisoner who had been on death row for 14 years”.

The Pratt and others case had many procedural errors, and if Jamaica’s officials had followed the procedures of their Constitution, they would be no historic case, Pratt v. A-G for Jamaica.

However, 31 years after the judgment of the Pratt case was delivered, on March 14, murder convictions of Vybz Kartel (Adidja Palmer) and others were quashed based on procedural error, resulting in sending back the case to a lower court to decide whether to retry the dancehall icon.

On March 20, The Gleaner published the article, ‘Patterson, Small label judge’s 2014 decision a ‘fatal error’.’

Therefore, it is fair to conclude, based upon the context of the article, that a computerised (digitised) system integrated with the existing judicial system will hold trials safely and allow key processes to continue moving seamlessly.

It also makes it easy to find legal precedents and reduces procedural errors, thousands of backlog of cases, and courts delay.

Judges in the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States use laptops, desktops, and computers technology, and their judicial systems are computerised (digitised).

Thus, technology advances access to justice by creating more streamed and accessible process. So we have much more work to do before we can consider the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) as our final court of appeal.

CARGILL KELLY