Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie yes­ter­day ac­knowl­edged that the Ju­di­cia­ry was not im­mune to crit­i­cism but ad­vised the me­dia to be more bal­anced and re­spon­si­ble in its re­port­ing, say­ing there was no cri­sis over any pro­longed de­lay in the de­liv­ery of judg­ments.He said so af­ter de­liv­er­ing the long-await­ed judg­ment in the case of con­vict­ed mur­der­er Lester Pit­man at the Court of Ap­peal, Hall of Jus­tice, Port-of-Spain.

He added: "The me­dia, in par­tic­u­lar, wield tremen­dous in­flu­ence in shap­ing pub­lic opin­ion. Free and in­de­pen­dent me­dia and a vi­brant and in­de­pen­dent Ju­di­cia­ry are both in­dis­pens­able com­po­nents of a free and de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety."With that comes tremen­dous re­spon­si­bil­i­ty on both sides. How­ev­er, in­com­plete or un­ver­i­fied re­port­ing can do se­ri­ous and un­war­rant­ed harm to the fab­ric of so­ci­ety and erode pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice."

In re­sponse to a se­ries of news­pa­per ar­ti­cles and com­men­taries over the last three weeks, which crit­i­cised the de­lay in the de­liv­ery of judg­ments, Archie said the un­for­tu­nate im­pres­sion which "may have been gar­nered in some quar­ters that the de­lay of over three years be­tween the hear­ing of this ap­peal and the de­liv­ery of judg­ment, which is, by any mea­sure un­usu­al, is the norm."

Last Fri­day, the Ju­di­cia­ry is­sued a state­ment on the is­sue of de­lays and Archie ac­cept­ed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the state of af­fairs.He re­ferred to the lat­est sta­tis­tics of the Court of Ap­peal and High Court to sup­port his claim."In the Court of Ap­peal, there are just over 500 ap­peals filed per year. Last year that would have in­volved 300 civ­il mat­ters (in­clud­ing fam­i­ly and mat­ri­mo­ni­al) and about 180 mag­is­te­r­i­al ap­peals."We have been dis­pos­ing of around 200 civ­il ap­peals per year (216 in 2012-2013) by a hear­ing.

"As of No­vem­ber 30, 2013, there were 19 re­served judg­ments out­stand­ing for more than one year, and 18 re­served dur­ing the course of this (cal­en­dar) year."Of the 19, two had to be resched­uled be­cause of the un­time­ly pass­ing of one of our brethren. So it turns out that about six per cent of the civ­il mat­ters (four per cent of the to­tal) have tak­en more that a year for de­liv­ery of judg­ment.

"As of this week, nine of the 18 from this (cal­en­dar) year and six of the 15 from be­fore 2013, will have been de­liv­ered, in­clud­ing the (Lester) Pit­man and (Ger­ard) Wil­son judg­ments that have been the source of much con­tro­ver­sy." He added: "As we said re­cent­ly, we are com­mit­ted to bring­ing to ze­ro by Ju­ly 2014, the num­ber of mat­ters that are out­stand­ing for more than six months."The gen­er­al trend is that less than ten per cent of de­ci­sions are re­served for any sig­nif­i­cant time.

"The strat­e­gy has been to try to give as ear­ly a hear­ing date as pos­si­ble and to do the ex­ten­sive prepa­ra­tion that would en­able us to give a de­ci­sion on the day or as soon as pos­si­ble there­after."How­ev­er, we are al­ways mind­ful that our de­ci­sions cre­ate bind­ing prece­dent for the guid­ance of sub­or­di­nate courts. Some mat­ters re­quire more care and we will nev­er sac­ri­fice ju­rispru­den­tial qual­i­ty on the al­tar of ex­pe­di­tion."A prop­er bal­ance has to be struck the in­stant a case fell on the wrong side of the line.

"Be­tween 2007-2008 and 2012-2013 there has been a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in the civ­il ap­peals dis­posed of (from 82 to 217). This is due in part to the large flood of pro­ce­dur­al ap­peals, which must be giv­en a hear­ing with­in 28 days. They are of­ten very com­plex (e.g. some of the Cli­co mat­ters). You will re­call that the Civ­il Pro­ceed­ing Rules was im­ple­ment­ed in 2008.

"While a de­lay in de­liv­ery of judg­ment for more than one year is not ac­cept­able, this is not the norm. Since 2008, the year in which I as­sumed of­fice, the dis­po­si­tion to fil­ings ra­tio has risen from 0.60 to 1.05 in the Court of Ap­peal. We have al­so been op­er­at­ing two short of the nor­mal num­ber of Judges for most of the past two years."

He said: "At the lev­el of the High Court, the best sta­tis­tics avail­able as of No­vem­ber 30, 2013 in­di­cate that, with a dis­po­si­tion rate of over 5,000 per year (5,245 in 2012-2013), in on­ly a lit­tle over one per cent of that num­ber of cas­es has judg­ment been re­served for more than six months. The civ­il ju­ris­dic­tion of the High Court has main­tained a dis­po­si­tion to fil­ings ra­tio of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1.0 over the past two years.

"So while there is cer­tain­ly room for im­prove­ment, the sit­u­a­tion is nowhere near as dire as has been made out to be by some and there cer­tain­ly has been sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment over the past five years.