WINDHOEK – Judge President Petrus Damaseb introduced new rules for the High Court that are designed to deliver speedy trials and regulate and monitor a judge’s delivery time on reserved judgments.
“It is common knowledge that criminal trials in the High Court last, on average, more than 30 days and that part-heard cases are more often the rule than the exception,” said Damaseb when launching the opening of the legal year for the High Court in Windhoek yesterday.
Damaseb said Namibia designed a criminal justice system “which is increasingly proving unsustainable” and it is time to look at innovative ways to deal with criminal cases.
He also put forward the idea of plea bargaining as a viable incentive for accused persons to plead guilty. “It is important therefore that, as a country, we earnestly investigate the possibility of introducing plea bargaining in our criminal justice system to serve as an incentive to accused persons to plead guilty,” the Judge President said.
He said he was encouraged by government efforts to investigate plea bargaining as a viable legislative intervention as current prosecution policy discourages guilty pleas.
The new rules of the High Court have been completed and will be published in the Government Gazette today as Government Notice No 4 and will come into effect on April 16. The new rules introduce very important innovations and measures such as transparency and accountability from judges, while bringing an end to judgments that are reserved for unknown periods.
Judges will be required to deliver judgments according to the prescriptions provided in the new rules and announce in public and open court the date for the delivery of the judgment.
The Registrar will be required to publish an annual report containing all cases registered, the number of cases completed, the number of reserved judgments, the period during which the judgment remained reserved and the deadlines by which a judgment should have been delivered in terms of published guidelines approved by the Judicial Service Commission.
“The new rules place emphasis on early identification of the real issues in a case and the speedy finalisation of cases,” Damaseb said, adding that this places an obligation on legal practitioners to develop a discipline of early preparation. “Legal practitioners will be required to prepare at an earlier stage in the case and to fully acquaint themselves with the facts surrounding their cases in order to formulate complete joint reports as will be required by the rules,” he said.
Co-operation between opposing lawyers, and with the managing judge, will become an important requirement when the new rules come into force, the Judge President emphasised.
Another important feature of the new rules is the introduction of mediators who will assist in exploring the settlement of disputes without the need for formal trial. The process of framing practice directives in terms of which the Alternative Dispute Resolution, as the practice will be known, is in motion and a training programme is planned for potential mediators towards the end of the current term, he stated.
It was also announced that the e-justice system would be implemented in the Main Division in Windhoek pending the completion of the practice directives and administrative manuals with the Northern Local Division in Oshakati. The e-justice web portal launch is scheduled for February this year followed by the User Acceptance Test scheduled for January 27 to March 21.
By Roland Routh