This newspaper has sympathy with much of the argument advanced by Attorney-General A.J. Nicholson as to why it has been difficult to carry out executions in Jamaica.

The mindset of the Privy Council is decidedly against capital punishment, and starting with the Pratt and Morgan ruling in 1993 that placed a five-year limit within which capital punishment must be executed, the United Kingdom-based judges have consistently placed obstacles to hanging. It is easy for convicts, with the aid of smart lawyers, to manipulate to defeat the five-year time frame so that, on the basis of Pratt and Morgan, their executions would become cruel and inhuman punishment.

But while the law lords may bear much of the burden for Jamaica's inability to abide by laws which remain on the books, the fault does not rest solely with the U.K. judges. Gross inefficiencies in the management of Jamaica's court system, and in the broader administration of justice, play a part.

Indeed, the case of Dalton Reynolds, reported by The Sunday Gleaner of February 18, underlines the point. Recently, the Court of Appeal upheld the guilty verdict against Reynolds for non-capital murder and that he should serve his sentence of life imprisonment, with eligibility for parole after 18 years.

What is significant about this case is that the appeal was 10 years in the making and the delay was the fault neither of Reynolds nor his lawyers. It was entirely the fault of the Jamaican court system and, ultimately, of the administration which finances the courts.

The problem was that over the period of a decade, Jamaica's Supreme Court could not put together a transcript of Reynolds' case for submission to the Court of Appeal. The Supreme Court's excuses ranged from a shortage of court reporters, the resignation of staff, the loss of notes and the absence of computers. No one mentioned incompetence on the part of the Registry of the Supreme Court and neither have we heard of sanctions against anyone in the system.

The Court of Appeal did, however, accept that a fundamental principle of justice was breached in the Dalton Reynolds case: He was denied his constitutional right to a fair hearing within a reasonable time. But despite the anxieties that he would have faced by this unjust delay, which was no fault of his, he was not provided with what he would consider practical relief.

There was enough evidence, the court held, to uphold the original guilty verdict, for which the verdict was not excessive. So the Appeal judges remedied the unconstitutional delay to a fair hearing by ordering that the Reynolds' sentence should begin from the date of his conviction.

The Reynolds case would not be so disturbing if we were confident that it was a rarity, and that no more were in the system. We are not so convinced; nor do we believe are those who manage the court system.