McFarlane

Daraine Luton, Sunday Gleaner Reporter

SOME ATTORNEYS who practise at the private bar have expressed reservations about plans to enact laws allowing for evidence to be given by video link.

Lloyd McFarlane, a defence counsel, told a Gleaner Editors ' Forum last week that the ideal condition for trials is to have everyone concerned with a matter in the same courtroom.

"I am uncomfortable with talk about video link. As far as possible we should have all the persons together in the same setting, including the persons who are to decide the matter," McFarlane said.

The move to institute video link for trials is part of a crime fighting strategy being employed by government. Attorney General and Justice Minister Dorothy Lightbourne told the forum that the bill, which could give rise to video-link has already been drafted and is to be tabled soon.

Lightbourne said that the act is intended to protect vulnerable witness and to take evidence in chief from children, especially in sexual abuse cases.

The general rule in the courts is that a witness must be present in the courtroom to give oral evidence.

Instead of coming into the courtroom, the witness sits in another room and gives evidence via a live television link. A television monitor is placed in the court, which transmits the image of the witness, and the witness has the benefit of a television monitor in his room that transmits the image of what is going on in the court.

The purpose

The purpose of television-linked evidence is to make it easier for some witnesses to give evidence.

The courtroom can be very intimidating and being in the same room as the accused may be very difficult for some witnesses.

McFarlane had earlier said that witnesses chose not to come forward in several cases because of fear.

"....When the witnesses attend the first two times and find themselves sitting across from the people related to the accused, they become really uncomfortable and it is not surprising when they are not there the third time," McFarlane said.

He added that the "whole physical environment is raw ... They feel exposed.

The witness protection programme has been used to secure vulnerable witnesses. The police have said that they have never lost someone who has gone under the programme. However, witnesses in cases who refused protection, have been threatened or killed in the past. It is this fear on the part of witnesses that experts said have contributed to the breakdown of several cases before the court or the non prosecution of suspected criminals.

Paula Llewellyn, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), said that it is time for influential persons in the justice system to work together in the interest of the country.

"I wish we could move to a time when all of us would depart from looking through the prism of narrow self-interest and look at the broader interest which embraces everybody," Llewellyn said.

The DDP added that it had reached the stage where a lot of vulnerable witnesses are not coming forward.

Formal verdict

"You cannot use section 31d (of the evidence act which allows first-hand hearsay statements to be admissible in criminal procee-dings) and you are put in a position where a nolle (prosequi) has to be entered or you have to have a formal verdict," the DPP said.

Some 230 nolle prosequi were entered by the DPP between April 2005 and March 2006, an increase of 66 over the previous year.

A nolle prosequi is normally entered by the prosecution when it does not have enough evidence to continue a case. The entry of a nolle closes the case, unless a condition has been attached, where the case can be recalled at a later date.

daraine.luton@gleanerjm.com