Case backlog crisis bites hard amid cash crunch in Judiciary

Chief Justice David Maraga (right) with Strathmore University Law School Dean Luis Franceschi during the launch of ‘The Constitution of Kenya: A Commentary on Wednesday. [David Njaaga, Standard]

It will take the Judiciary four years to clear the backlog of cases unless more judges and magistrates are hired.

With 674 judicial officers against 52 million Kenyans, Chief Registrar of the Judiciary Anne Amadi said yesterday that the number of fresh cases filed in the last fiancial year plus pending ones were overwhelming for the current judcial officers.

In the year under review, 344,130 fresh cases were filed, 258,180 of which were criminal and 85,190 civil.

At the same time, 45,000 cases transited to the five-year backlog band.

General improvement

“With this human capacity, it will take four years to clear case backlog without filing fresh ones,” said Amadi.

Speaking at the launch of a performance report released yesterday by Chief Justice David Maraga, Amadi said the budget allocation for the Judiciary decreased to Sh12 billion (0.43 per cent) of the national budget which has risen to Sh3 trillion. 

“It is a concern that we cannot ignore,” she said.

According to the report, there was a general improvement in the courts compared to the 2016/17 financial year.

The appeals court, with five stations countrywide, resolved 1,195 cases in the 2017/18 financial year up from 1,057 resolved the previous year.

The productivity of judge benches rose from 133 cases in 2016/17 to 189 cases. The best appeal court in Kenya, headed by Justice Phillip Waki, had a 100 per cent performance rate.

In the High Court, overall cases resolved increased from 14,002 to 37,682 in the year under review. 

The Supreme Court defied election politics and petitions against judges to beat set performance targets in 2017/18.

The apex court cleared 83 per cent of cases on the date it set for judgment in addition to 100 per cent hearing of cases on the day it was scheduled.

Presidential poll petitions

But according to the report, these petitions notwithstanding, the Supreme Court has a 70 per cent case clearance rate with clearance of appeals from the Court of Appeal ranked at 63 per cent.

This means you have a 97.3 per cent likelihood of getting your case resolved by the Supreme Court on time.

It was however not all good for the apex court as it only cleared 32 per cent of backlog and 30 per cent of general applications.

This is lower than the 50 per cent recorded in 2016/17 financial year.

Some of the applications that have never been cleared to date include a controversial one by activist Okiya Omtatah who wanted to stop the 2017 presidential elections and another by Jubilee Party seeking to force opposition leader Raila Odinga to participate in the second round run-off.

“The Judiciary is facing various challenges despite the high performance being witnessed today as highlighted in this report. Some of these challenges include inadequate infrastructure, shortage of judges, magistrates and judicial staff, inadequate resources and inadequate equipment and vehicles,” said Justice Maraga.

 By the end of March this year, a total of 154,184 cases which were more than five years old (91 per cent of the backlog) had already been resolved.

Within the same time, some 45,000 cases transited into the five-year band, meaning about 1,667 cases were transiting into five-year backlog every month.