LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Re: Cayman Brac Court
Friday, November 4, 2005
Dear Sir,
I refer to Talbert Don Tatum’s letter to the editor
published in your October 13th 2005 edition. Mr. Tatum raises a number of
concerns regarding court proceedings in Cayman Brac that I address as follows:
1.“The building wasn’t open and no one knew anything
about the keys”.
The judicial department does not own any
buildings in the Brac. As a result, we rely upon local officials to open their
facilities for us. It is unfortunate that the facility was not opened in a
timely fashion. This was an inconvenience for all concerned.
2.“The judge was five minutes late, court started 15
minutes late; 10:15 am instead of 10:00 am, trials started”.
The judge was available to open Court at the
scheduled time; however, upon being advised that the building was locked she
waited for notification that the building was open.
It takes time to set up for Court in a
facility like the Aston Rutty Civic Centre which is a multi-purpose facility,
not a sole use courthouse. I congratulate our staff for setting up and opening
Court in only 15 minutes.
3.“There was no place to pay your fines. After
twenty-five minutes, someone from Treasury finally came to collect fines”.
This, again, is a result of using a facility
like the Civic Centre; it has no accounts office to accept fine payments.
There would be less disruption to local officials if fine payments were made
at the Brac’s permanent government offices; however, as a convenience to the
public, a local official attends during court sessions to collect fines on
site. We thank the Brac administration for their co-operation in this regard.
4.“Then, no lawyers were in court to represent most of
the cases that were to be tried, so for those that had lawyers the day was
lost. Time and money was again lost.”
In the Cayman Islands, on most days, there
are 3 – 4 criminal and traffic courts in session. There are very few criminal
defence lawyers in the Cayman Islands (none are government employees). As a
result, most lawyers are double booked. When lawyers have clients in different
courts in Grand Cayman on the same day, they are able to “run” between courts
relatively easily. It is not possible to do so when the courts are on
different Islands. The loss of “time and money” is a factor of geography and
limited resources. That stated, the cases listed in the Brac are booked
sometime in advance and by having regard to the availability of lawyers. The
lawyers usually turn up as expected and as the statistics below reveal, they
were available for the trial of many cases on this day.
It should be noted that during the three days that the
court sat in the Brac in October, the Hon. Magistrate presided over 77 matters
and was able to finalize 32 of those cases. This extraordinary result was
accomplished by sitting beyond normal working hours.
The judges, lawyers and court staff that participate in
Court on the Brac should be applauded for their efforts. They conduct
themselves professionally in a difficult working environment.
The judicial department is investigating alternate
facilities on the Brac with a view to providing more efficient court
services.
Delene Cacho
Courts Administrator.
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