EDITORIAL - An important signal from Justice Campbell

Justice Lennox Campbell's decision last week to release, without condition, four men whose murder case had lingered for 11 years, without going to trial, has excited significant debate.

However, this newspaper appreciates the judge's action as a signal of the centrality of the Constitution in the administration of justice that courts, like the wider society, have an obligation to respect.

Or, as Justice Campbell expressed it, "The Constitution means something."

An important perspective is that the case against Byron Johnson, Solomon Johnson, Devon Hackett and Carlos Williams had, prior to Justice Campbell's decision, been called up and put off or traversed 38 times for various reasons. At the 39th, when Justice Campbell ruled, there was, as was the case at the previous sitting, an insufficiency of jurors.

Section 14 (3) of the new Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms makes it obligatory that a person who is arrested and charged be tried "within a reasonable time".

Moreover, if a person is arrested or detained, the court can release him "either unconditionally or upon reasonable conditions to secure his attendance at the trial or any other stage of the proceedings".

This Charter of Rights provision is broadly analogous to the old Section 15(3)(b) of the Constitution, which said that when a person "is not tried within reasonable time, then without prejudice to any further proceeding which may be brought against him, he shall be released unconditionally or upon reasonable conditions, including, in particular such conditions as are reasonably necessary to ensure that he appears at a later date for trial ... ."

Fundamentally, the Constitution, insistent on the primacy of the right to liberty, expects that persons who are detained, or arrested and charged, have a right to an expeditious hearing of their cases, or that they be released.

That places responsibility on the State and its institutions, including law-enforcement agencies and the justice system, to act with alacrity and efficiency in attending to the matters before them. That, clearly, does not happen.

Huge backlog in courts

Indeed, Jamaica's courts have a backlog of more than 450,000 cases, and recent reports from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions indicate that the files with outstanding decisions on whether to go forward with prosecutions are voluminous.

This situation is not entirely the fault of the courts, its allied judicial arms or law enforcement. In part, it is the result of the legislative and executive arms of Government, which have not managed the affairs of the country in a manner to provide the quantity and quality of resources necessary for these systems to work optimally.

It is not the fault of the accused men that the State cannot muster enough jurors to hear cases. And, however they may have contributed to the delays, 11 years has to be deemed far beyond a reasonable period within which their case ought to have been disposed of. On the face of it, their constitutional rights have been impinged, whatever view persons may have formed of them as individuals.

Importantly, though, the case against the men is not state-barred, and the Constitution indicates - and Justice Campbell said so - that they can be brought before the court in the future.

If we don't respect the Constitution for everyone, it won't work for any of us.