October 18, 2011

Jury trials on again from early next year

By David Clarkson

Christchurch courts expect to be running jury trials again somewhere in the city from early next year.

The Ministry of Justice says planning is well advanced and an announcement about the venue will be made soon.

No jury trials have been held in the city since the February 22 earthquake, because the Court House has been out of action in the central city.

Court sessions and office work have been going on at 12 venues around the region but all of the trial work has been sent to other centres ? Timaru, Greymouth, Nelson, Dunedin, and Wellington.

Court News staff have recently attended sessions where trials have been remanded for hearing at the as-yet-unnamed Christchurch venue from January 30.

It is believed that venue is not the present Court House, a tall block in Durham Street, where jury trials were taking place as the big quake struck.

The Ministry of Justice?s Canterbury Earthquake Strategic Recovery Manager?Murray Smith said definitive answers about the structural condition of the main court complex were not yet available.

He said the ministry had commissioned geotechnical and quantitative engineering reports on the complex and expected to receive them at the end of October. Decisions on the courts complex were anticipated some weeks after that.

Although court services have kept operating at the venues scattered across the city all year, court reporters have not been surprised that it has not been possible to restart the jury system in the city.

Such courts require specialist venues, with cells for those being held in custody, and separate sound-proof jury rooms where the juries can go about their deliberations.

There has also been the issue that people struggling with jobs, damaged homes, and transport in a city that was very badly affected by the on-going quakes, might not be able to take time to sit on jury panels, which are usually selected for a week at a time.

This has put extra pressure on smaller centres where the pool of potential jurors is smaller and businesses may feel the repeated loss of staff who are summoned as jurors.

Smith said that in spite of the challenges, most Christchurch court jurisdictions were keeping pace with the volume of cases coming into the system.

?Between March and September 2011 approximately 13,400 civil, criminal, family and youth court cases were filed with the District Court. During the same period approximately 12,800 cases were disposed of,? he said.

He made his comments after Christchurch District Court Judge Gary MacAskill said he believed it was high time the court situation in the city was sorted out, as he struggled to schedule an urgent hearing at a sitting in the Rangiora Court House.

People newly arrested and held in custody are transported to Rangiora each day, to appear before a judge, and that court also handles sentencing sessions. People held in custody have their remand appearances at a session held inside Christchurch Men?s Prison three times a week.

People on bail or summoned to court appear at the Nga Hau e Wha marae in Pages Road.

Family Court and Youth Court are held at other venues, and the High Court has used venues at Rangiora, the Air Force Museum at Wigram, and Ashburton. Civil cases are heard at the Law School at the University of Canterbury.

Smith said it remained necessary to operate court and justice services from multiple locations. This meant that setting hearing dates was not straightforward compared to working from a single location, but the ministry was coping well with the workload in an environment where court rooms were scarce.