Lawyers accuse Chief Justice over backlog of cases

By Kepher Otieno

Chief Justice Evan Gicheru has been blamed for failing to appoint more magistrates to expedite hearing of cases pending in courts.

Western Kenya Law Society of Kenya (LSK) officials decried huge backlog of cases that had subsequently led to congestion in the prisons.

LSK Western Chapter Chairman Jude Ragot accused the CJ of failing to recommend new judges to the Judicial Service Commission for ratification.

Mr Ragot said: "The CJ is to blame for moving at snail speed to implement key judicial reforms imperative for the sector’s effective performance and we wonder why."

Ragot’s statement came in the wake of an appeal by Mr Gicheru to all courts to conduct regular visits to prisons for the purposes of mention of pending cases and establishing cases requiring orders of revision.

Little success

In a reminder notice to all courts, the CJ also wants regular visits done to identify inmates who prison officers fail to produce in courts and act on them.

Speaking to The Standard in Kisumu yesterday, the lawyers claimed such directives have been issued before with little success.

"The Chief Justice has been issuing such statements, and even his predecessors did, but they have yielded little or no impact at all because of lack of enforcement by relevant authorities," Ragot said.

They advised the CJ to instead invoke powers conferred upon him to induce appointment of more judges to speed up dispensation of justice in courts.

They cited Kakamega and Kitale High Court diaries for this year, which are already closed.

"There are no available dates to fix new cases this year in the two institutions, meaning one can only file cases in 2011 diary," Ragot said.

This, he claimed, was the grim reality that the advocates faced in local courts yet there was no immediate respite in the offing from Gicheru’s office.

Counsels Richard Onsongo, David Otieno and Kennedy Okong’o supported him. They blamed the backlog CJ’s inability to audit his officers.

"We need to have structures where magistrates and judges are audited over cases they handle per month and returns filed," they said.