Justice Sykes: Dispense with jury trials

With the resumption of jury trial suffering a further delay in light of the island’s increasing COVID-19 positivity rate, emerging variants, low vaccination take-up coupled with other negative factors, Chief Justice Bryan Sykes believes the time has come to eliminate jury trials.

“It seems to me the time has come now to do away with jury trial because the truth is there is nothing to suggest that jury trial is inherently a better quality of justice than a bench trial. There is no evidence to suggest that,” the chief justice said yesterday during the opening of the Hilary term (January 7-March 25).

He urged the executive and legislative arms of Government to revisit the question of jury trial, noting that “if we are going to retain them, then we have to have all the financial and material resources necessary to make it work in the context of a pandemic because it is going to be costly”.

Justice Sykes’ comments follow his announcement yesterday that the jury trial which has been on suspension since March 2019 would be delayed for another three weeks, after which its resumption would be assessed.

Right to a fair trial

With the pandemic stretching into an indefinite future with the accompanying issues including the inability of the island’s courts to properly accommodate jurors for empanelling as well as the small sizes of some of the courtrooms, the chief justice said all the factors combined make it difficult to contemplate and to manage jury trials.

“Where we are now because we are unable to have jury trials, the cases are being pushed further and further back and it’s just a matter of time before someone is going to make the claim that their constitutional rights to a fair trial within a reasonable time are being violated,” Justice Sykes said.

Nevertheless, he said, considerations are being made on what measure can be implemented to have jury trial resume.

But in the same vein, he said it must be noted that “there is no magic in a jury trial, the question ultimately is whether there was a fair trial and fairness is assessed now in light of the procedural steps leading up to the actual trial and what happens during the actual trial process”.