CJ: Cops must serve warrants

 

February 2, 2022Main Stories

By BEVERLY PETER and CLARISSA MOI
CHIEF Justice Sir Gibbs Salika says more than 6,000 bench warrants are pending execution nationwide and blames the police for failing to carry out the court orders.
“A total of 6,372 warrants are still pending and need to be executed by police,” he told The National yesterday.
“Due to the police failure to carry out court orders to serve the warrants, the cases have been piling up for about seven years.”
Sir Gibbs revealed that more than 11,000 criminal cases were still pending with more than half of it bench warrant cases.
“Total pending criminal cases is 11,221 as of last December.
“That comprises of people on bail, custody and bench warrants.
“But we will find strategies not to count those bench warrants because it is the work of the police to get them and they are not doing that.
“Bench warrant cases are a problem and are being added yearly.
“Bench warrant cases constitute about 55 per cent of the cases that are still pending,” he lamented.
Sir Gibbs said of the 11,221 pending criminal cases, 5,000 were the ones on bail and in custody while the rest were on bench warrants.
“Police should go and serve the bench warrants so that they are brought to court.
“If police can execute the bench warrants (efficiently), it will help the system to get rid of those cases and move on with the new ones.
“It is a massive task and for that reason, we need more judges.
“The judiciary needs about 60 judges.
“We have got the budget to have 55 judges.
“Currently, we have 36 substantive judges and 12 acting judges.
“If we can get 12 new judges, I believe that will be enough to deal with a good number of cases to offload the pile of cases,” he added.
Sir Gibbs said one of the ways to deal with the backlog of cases quickly was to transfer some of the pending cases to alternative dispute resolution (mediation).
“One week each month is allocated for mediation and mediators, with a few judges involved in mediating those cases so that more cases can be disposed of instead of waiting for the court,” he said.
“We believe that there are cases that can be mediated.
“We can sit down, discuss the matter and come to a solution to mediate the dispute and the case is then disposed.
“This will save judges from writing decisions and judgments.
“This is the initiative we will take to try and reduce the backlog of cases for this year,” he added.