Backlog Results in Another Case Being Tossed
By 250 News
Monday, September 20, 2010 03:59 AM
Prince George, B.C.- The crisis facing the Provincial Courts in B.C. has been stressed once more in a decision that tossed out a charge. This time it was a charge of speeding against a truck driver.
The charge carried a fine of 196 dollars, but the accused challenged the matter because it took a year and a half to bring the matter before a Provincial Court Judge.
In his decision to stay the charges, Judge O’Byrne ruled the delays were not the result of anyone doing “anything out of the ordinary.” He noted that when a ticket is written, the accused then has 30 days to respond. He says it is reasonable to expect that the Crown should be able to be prepared to head to court much faster than what has happened “This is a traffic ticket. It is not very difficult at all, and this is a matter where it should be able to be prepared, ready to go within 30 days very possibly.”
In his decision , Justice O’Byrne pointed at the lack of resources as one of the reasons for the delay in this and other cases. “The institutional resources here in the Cariboo Northeast are of unique circumstances, and I am uniquely aware of them because I am the administrative judge for the Provincial Court here in the Cariboo Northeast District. The Cariboo Northeast District is an area slightly geographically larger than France. It has 20 court locations. It has 11 full‑time judges and one senior part‑time judge. The demands upon our resources are, as in other places in this province, quite heavy.”
Justice O’Byrne blames the provincial government for failing to act “ For example, in Cranbrook recently, the government failed to appoint a judge, even though they knew for a year the judges were retiring and there have been stays of proceedings there because cases took too long. “
O’Byrne is not the first to bring the shortage of judges to the attention of the government. Last December, Provincial Court Judge Brecknall, in the case Regina versus Richard Zagwyn last December which reads, in part, “The failure of the government to act has now imposed a crisis upon the Cariboo Northeast District. Simply put, without additional appointments, the Cariboo Northeast District no longer has sufficient judicial resources in Prince George to meet the caseload. Matters have been scheduled from January through September 2010 on the basis of a complement of five full‑time judges and one part‑time senior judge. With the reduction of one full‑time judge, the remaining judges cannot hear all of the existing cases .”
Justice O'Byrne noted that in 2005/2006 there were 143 judges serving the entire Provincial Court in B.C.. That number is down to 124.5 for 2010-2011 at a time when the number of cases is growing.
When Opinion 250 pressed Attrorney General Mike de Jong about the court crisis last week, he said his ministry is “acutely aware of the need, and doing what we can to meet that need”.
The real issue may be one of budgeting, as de Jong pointed out at the time that the “court” is more than the judge, “it is the clerks, it is the sheriffs, it is all of the support personnel that are an integral part of allowing a court to operate so when we make the appointments (judicial) and there are more to be made in the coming days and weeks, we have to be mindful of the fact that we also need to provide those support services.”
De Jong says these have been challenging budgetary times, although his ministry did receive a small budgetary lift.
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Posted by: acrider54 on September 20 2010 5:25 AM
money. Try hitting the cronic bad guys, thieves, drug dealing low lifes and such, a little harder, take all their possessions and have a giant auction. Leave the poor working man alone.