THE COURT OF Appeal’s ruling – stemming from a harrowing case involving the rape of a child by her football coach – stating there is no right to a speedy trial is the latest blow to citizens of this country, whether victims or accused, forced to deal with the criminal justice system.
In an unsettling decision, Justices of Appeal Mark Mohammed, Peter Rajkumar and Maria Wilson on July 22 held not only that the Constitution does not grant victims a right to swift proceedings, but that there is not even an entitlement to such proceedings “within a reasonable time.”
This is in the face of our founding document’s articulation of a right to “the protection of the law.”
Said the judges, “These are matters which have political, administrative, legislative, and financial implications which cannot properly be addressed by a court’s reading into the Constitution a right which neither its language, structure, nor precedent permit.”
This lawsuit was novel. But it was premised on the most uncontroversial of principles: that justice delayed is justice denied; that a court should do no harm; that minors, especially, should be safeguarded.
Yet each one of these principles was violated, according to the facts.
On October 16, 2017, the girl, who was impregnated by her alleged attacker at age 16, made her first appearance before a magistrate. The football coach, who was also a neighbour, was granted bail and ordered to stay 150 metres away from the child. At the mere sight of him, she would fall ill. Her CXC grades were hurt.
For days leading up to each subsequent hearing, she would get depressed and lose sleep. On at least one occasion, the accused brushed against her in the court itself, triggering trauma.
This went on for five years, as the matter was adjourned repeatedly, with the defendant or others not appearing.
The Court of Appeal was unconvinced these facts gave rise to any remedy.
Setting aside the comprehensive reasoning of the judge at first instance, Justice Avason Quinlan-Williams – herself a former magistrate with vast experience – they shut down the notion of fundamental rights being violated and warned “moral persuasions,” “personal opinions” and “divination” should not affect law.
However, taken to its logical conclusion, the court’s ruling would theoretically permit any trial to go on forever, since there is no right to speedy proceedings, or even proceedings conducted within a reasonable timeframe.
Not even Franz Kafka could have dreamt up this.
What the justices did not do in their substantive ruling, though, they achieved in their order for costs. They acknowledged the need to consider victims in a “sensitive, practical and meaningful way.”
That is exactly what they had been asked to do by acknowledging a right to swift justice in the first place.
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