New Chief Justice has Mt. Problems to scale

By Pravin Bowry

Arising from my last week’s column, Let New CJ Fight Delays in Criminal Courts, I have been made privy to other happenings in the Judiciary, which indicate that more than radical surgeries or change of guard will be required to get the house in order.

The factual picture which emerges is indicative of a completely broken down and creaking system so debased and perverted that seeking justice in Kenyan Courts is hardly an inherent right of a citizen.

And it is not always the judges and magistrates who are the perpetrators of the problems though the administrative buck ultimately stops at the doors of the station head or the provincial head.

The para-legal staff are said to be engaged in conspiracies of amazing magnitude. Lost files, removal and destruction of original documents and material exhibits is occurrences, which are ‘normal’.

Court clerks acting as ‘agents’ or ‘brokers’ for processing documentation and facilitating various administrative processes is nothing new.

All over the country, there are reports of manipulation of ongoing frauds related to collection of court fees.

Blatant and outright forgeries to printing of parallel receipts are reported, and culprits hardly brought to account.

The introduction of the direct banking facilities in some stations has in the last six months increased the collection of court fees by over 45 million shillings, all indicative of the fact that colossal monies are being misappropriated for within the Judiciary.

Profitable schemes

A chain of organised criminality, it appears, is born within the judicial staff once a Magistrate or Judge has delivered a judgement, be it in civil or criminal matters.

It is reliably reported that highly placed clerical staff in the Judiciary have set up profitable schemes with litigants where original judgements are doctored, pages removed, and even original hand written judgements of magistrates forged to be presented in appeals all without the knowledge of the judicial officer who delivered the judgement.

There are a chain of investigations going on where culprits are being sought by the police and the in-house silence and officialdom not to publicise the inside story is startling.

And lawyers, human rights organisation and prison authorities will get a rude awakening at the next revelation of collective inefficiency of the systems.

In all criminal matters, remand prisoners must be brought by law to court after one month in matters arising from the Resident Magistrate’s Courts.

In the High Court, this provision is dispensed with.

Such is the collective inefficiency of the judicial record keeping and the prison authorities that in the prisons, there are hundreds of "forgotten prisoners" who have not been taken to courts for up to three years.

Some prisoners have been forgotten by the Appeal process, others when moved from one station to another and in some cases acquitted or discharged prisoners have not been released by the inefficient system.

Menu card

The Judiciary and the prison officers urgently need to conduct a census in all prisons in the country under the wide eyes of the Law Society and human rights organisations.

Setting up 47 High Courts in all counties, appointing new judges and magistrates and sending home others in the five months and getting rid of the cancerous schemes in the Judiciary is the menu card of the new Chief Justice!

The writer is an Assistant Director with KACC.

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