Attorney Terrence Williams - Gleaner file photo
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Attorney Terrence Williams is urging the government to provide the necessary resources to fast-track the production of transcripts to ensure appeals are heard within a timely manner.
Mr. Williams, one of the attorneys who represented Brian Russell, revealed that it took seven years for the transcript of his client to be prepared and one year for the matter to be heard in the Court of Appeal.
Mr. Russell was sentenced in 2015 to eleven years imprisonment for firearm and robbery offences.
But the Court of Appeal quashed Mr. Russell's conviction and sentence due to the delay in reviewing his matter.
Mr. Williams believes some of the inefficiencies in preparing transcripts for appeals may be due to an understaffed court reporting unit and an unattractive compensation package.
"If it is that someone has been, they believe, wrongly convicted and you say that they have a right to review that conviction and then the state fetters that right, the state interferes with that right so much by delay, persons will lose respect for Jamaican justice and will feel that what we are really doing is oppressing them," he argued.
"So we must not behave as if our constitutional rights are written in pencil. We must note that there are real rights, they're not illusions and that people of all stripes must be protected because no one could accept the situation when you think about it."
The attorney was a guest Tuesday on the Morning Agenda on Power 106FM.
Court reporters at the Supreme Court have from time-to-time complained about inadequate computers, staff shortage, being underpaid and overburdened with work.
Mr. Williams reiterated that the delay in hearing appeals within a timely manner could undermine public trust and confidence in the Jamaican justice system.
He noted that in "old-time days" it was widely held that appeals would be heard in about three to four weeks, but now the process takes years.
"It's English law that we have, which the English have since reformed, but we still putter on with old English law, matched by inefficiency which produces this unfairness," he contended.
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