By Ronald G. Burch-Smith
The High Court as a venue for the trial of serious criminal matters is both woefully underutilized and at the same time over burdened. Its jurisdiction to impose severe sentences is currently not invoked by the authorities in several areas of serious criminal offences such as robberies and firearm charges, possession of and trafficking in prohibited substances and serious frauds and other offences of dishonesty. It is over burdened as relates to its capacity to dispose of the matters that do come it its attention – homicide, serious sexual offences, kidnapping – as there are scores of matters where persons are remanded awaiting trial or on bail with no trial date in sight. With the perennial wish list of more judges, more state counsel, more courtrooms and legislation and more personnel to facilitate real-time court stenography being perpetually unrequited, there is little cause for optimism.
Fortunately, an important mechanism to expedite matters in the High Court after committal which is also available in the Magistrate’s Court in summary criminal matters is the newly introduced device of
