Source : Google photo of the justice system needing reform
Synopsis : The reform in the justice system worldwide to
make it easier for the poor people to get justice at a minimum cost and hassle
is long overdue but it faces many challenges due to vested interests of
non-reformists. The blog looks at many issue that need addressing as well as
the parallel justice system prevailing in some countries that serve the poor
better.
Once I was in a court room not as a litigant but as an
observer where the hearing on a case was in progress. There was a poor man who
had been summoned to be present for the hearing. He obviously had come from a distance spending
a great deal of money that he could ill afford and was showing great sign of
distress and discomfort but it was just the start of a circus that was being
played in the name of justice so I was shocked.
The lawyer who was grandstanding and repeating words like “
I must remind you that you are under the oath “ Quoting from Perry Mason in
English that the poor man could not understand. So the questions thrown at him
were first translated into the language he understood so that he could answer
them that had to be again translated back into English so the whole process
became very tedious and lengthy.
To make the matter worse, the court stenographer who did
not know stenography kept interrupting the procedure because she could not write
in her yellow bond paper fast enough with pencil and frequently asked how to
spell some words. It was quite obvious that she did not speak, read or write
English so why was she employed to be the court steno?
Why was English the court language when it was not spoken
or understood by anyone including the lawyer who was only quoting what he had
memorized from the Perry Mason movies? Why the judge did not order the lawyer
to speak only in the vernacular so that the hearing could proceed speedily? Why
the court had appointed a woman as a steno who did not know stenography and who
could not understand, read or spell English words? I was not amused and felt
sorry for the poor man fidgeting and sweating in that court room that was
poorly ventilated and was hot.
I was very annoyed by the comic nature of the proceedings
and thought that the whole thing reeked of a farce that the poor man was being
subjected to in the name of justice wasting everybody’s time doing injustice to
the justice that the court was supposed to deliver.
The corruption of the justice system whether criminal or
civil is a worldwide phenomenon that has a created a backlog of cases in every
court in any country where the litigants may have to wait years for justice
that they in the end may or may not get. It ruins them completely because the
tremendous cost of litigation and the years they have to wait for the justice
that may still be denied to them if the crooked lawyers have their way takes its toll.
It is said that the justice delayed is the justice denied
but looking at the court proceedings I wondered if the poor farmer who was
dragged to the court will ever get the justice and how he will pay for all the
cost.
The criminal justice system that had its roots in England
in the past centuries was imposed on its colonies like India and other
countries by the colonialists that still remains in place using laws that have
become obsolete and meaningless but the courts say that they do not make the
laws. They just implement them.
It all starts at the local police station where a person
may go and register a case against someone who had committed a crime like rape,
murder or assault so a First Information Report or FIR is lodged by the
attending policeman citing violations of many laws. A judge may then issue an
arrest warrant so that the offending person may be put in jail waiting for a
trial to begin so that a verdict may be reached on the case.
But if the complainant is a poor person in shabby clothes
seeking justice or a poor woman who says that she was raped by many men will
often be ignored and the policemen may not register an FIR from her. It changes
if the person reporting a crime is well dressed and comes in a fancy car then
he may even be offered a cup of tea. This prejudice against people of lower
caste who are mostly poor is widespread in India.
So I will go back to the time in England when a poor starving boy who stole a loaf of bread was arrested and dragged to a court room without the representation of a competent lawyer was sentenced by a tough judge after a preliminary hearing and sentenced the poor child to be transported meaning sending him in a slave ship to Australia that had become a penal colony for England. Thousands of poor men, women and children were thus transported to Australia where many perished under extremely harsh conditions. Those who survived the long sea voyage, scurvy and diarrhea were forced to work to build prisons and other buildings. Here is a video to watch on the subject.
https://youtu.be/M7O-6PDQp0A ( Source : U Tube video )
Transportation had been used as a form of punishment since 1717. Under the "Bloody Code" , courts were looking for a punishment which was not as extreme as hanging, but tougher than a fine. In the absence of proper prisons, transportation seemed the answer and was used for over a hundred years. In the 18th century convicts were transported to America. After US independence in 1776, however, this option was closed and the British government looked for another destination. Australia had been mapped and claimed as British territory in 1770, so convicts began to be sent there. From 1787 to 1857, 162,000 British convicts were transported to Australia. Seven out of eight of these were males; some were as young as nine or ten; some were over eighty. Many political prisoners were transported, including Luddites, Chartists, the Tolpuddle Martyrs and Irish Nationalists.
They were sent first to the "hulks" -disused
warships. Conditions on these rotting vessels were often terrible, with death
rates of one in three. The long voyage to Australia could take six months. Many
lives were lost among the convicts, locked in iron cages below decks in
insanitary conditions, although by the end of the transportation era more care
was taken and loss of life on the voyage was minimized.
Once in Australia, convicts lived in barracks and worked in
gangs, building roads and bridges or working on farms or quarries. Some were
sent out to work for farmers. If they behaved themselves, their sentence could be
reduced by a "ticket of leave." The majority of convicts decided to
stay in Australia at the end of their sentences, recognizing that they could
make a better life there than returning to Britain and, probably, poverty and
crime.
By the mid-19th century, however, opinion was turning
against transportation. The "Bloody Code" had ended. It seemed wrong
to offer convicts a free passage to build a new life in Australia when some
people were paying to go. Removing criminals to another land did not seem to
have had any effect on the crime-rate. Prisons were now considered a better
method of punishing and/or reforming criminals and many new ones were being
built. Most of all, Australians began to object strongly to their country being
used as a dumping-ground for Britain's criminals. ( Source : Wikipedia)
The courts in England were filled by lawyers in black robes
in every corridor who looked important carrying voluminous documents with very
sinister looks on their face because they literally were responsible for the
fate of those who had broken the law in some way. The punishments were so
severe for stealing a loaf of bread that even a starving child was not spared.
The courts are now filled with dockets that are given a
number that the court clerk decides to present or not to present to the judge
depending upon the severity of the crime or when the docket was filed but it led
to massive corruption in the justice system making the court clerks very rich.
Those who cannot pay the clerk may have their cases
languish for years and never see the day when a verdict is reached. Some
litigants may die, witnesses may vanish, documents may be forged, some people
may be threatened or intimidated by the offending parties so there may be many
reasons why a case is delayed for years.
The lawyers benefit for this delay because they get paid
each time a case comes up for hearing so they always try to postpone it to a
future date causing severe anguish to the people seeking justice.
A court is a horrible place filled with fear, anxiety, trepidation
and a sense of finality that can destroy a person even if he is not guilty of
any crime. We hear of numerous cases of miscarriage of justice when an innocent
person is put in jail for twenty years for a crime he did not commit so who
pays for his lost twenty years? Does a simple apology suffice? Why were
innocent and hungry children sent to Australia and not given few loaves of
bread and sent home? Was there no social service for them?
Now a days literally any person can be put in jail on
trumped up charges that he has to fight in court and spend a great deal of
money and time in jail just to prove that he is innocent.
I will now go back to the time when the king presided over
a case and decided swiftly if the accused was guilty or not and gave the
verdict accordingly. His court was not filled with back robed lawyers hovering
over the accused like vultures but filled with dread and a sense of finality
just the same because the king decided the fate of the accused without lengthy
deliberations.
Source : Google photo of an elephant executing a convict in Akbar's court
I have seen myself how justice was done during the time of
Emperor Akbar. In his new capital Fatehpur Sikri, Akbar had a massive elephant
chained to a peg of stone. This elephant was trained to execute a person who
was given the death penalty by the king by stepping on his chest. The king was
a very busy person and had many duties to fulfill as a ruler so his time was
precious. This swift method of justice worked so well that very few people
violated the laws. No one could be bribed in the King’s court.
Now many justices of the Supreme Court in India have
demanded the reform of the justice system because they being lawyers have
experienced the corruption that delays the justice but they have come up
against a deeply entrenched system that maintains the status quo.
The lawyers benefit from the delays and the courts benefit
from the income they get from the fees the litigants have to pay so people
suffer. The lower courts are filled with cases filed there on frivolous grounds
that do not merit court’s time. You will frequently hear of cases filed by people
who want to sue someone for defamation even if they are known to be criminals.
This has created a huge backlog of cases that wait for years to be heard.
To complicate the matter, there is a shortage of judges
everywhere while the number of lawyers keep multiplying. Many universities
churn out Law graduates in record numbers who want to become lawyers.
I will now write about a parallel justice system that
exists in some countries even today so I will start with Haiti where I used to
work as an agronomist. The Haitians often take their grievances to a court run
by Houngans or voodoo priests who meet secretly or often not so secretly to
deliver justice. You can hear their drum beats late at night when they gather
somewhere to perform some voodoo rituals that are attended by a large number of
people. These rituals are of religious nature that are not approved by the
Bible thumpers but its origin is rooted in the African tribal culture they
brought to Haiti long ago.
Source : Getty images of houngan or voodoo priests in Haiti
The houngans or the voodoo priests prepare a very powerful toxin they derive from the puffer fish and mix it with some other secret stuff. If someone steps on the powder unknowingly, he loses all control over his body and becomes like a corpse but does not lose his consciousness. This is how they punish a person who has committed a serious crime by making him a zombie They do not rise from their coffin but wander around after losing their mind.
In Africa where I have worked in many countries, I have
learned that in all their villages, they have their village councils headed by
their village chief. The chief and all the members of their village council are
elected freely by the villagers so they serve free of charge for a certain
period. If a member or the chief dies, they elect a new chief or the member
again. The village council hears of cases of land dispute, domestic issues,
petty crimes, thievery, sex related abuses and all such matters that they try
to solve.
Source : Google photo of a village council in an African village
Often the punishment can be in the form of a few goats or
cows that the offender must give to the offended party or some money. They also
serve as a counsel in the case of domestic violence or disputes. There are no
jails for the accused but people generally respect the verdict of the council
in any case so I found that their system really works in rural areas. The urban
area crimes are a very different matter that are handled by the police and the
courts.
This parallel system of justice at the village level in
many countries in Africa and in other parts of the world serves the poor better
than their court system rife with corruption and inefficient docket method
delaying justice.
In any civilized society, we are supposed to be governed by
laws that are promulgated by the elected members of the parliament or congress
if the country has a democratic system. There are thousands of laws dating from
antiquity while new ones are made all the time. There are thousands of old and
obsolete laws that are no longer valid today but no one dares to remove them.
Now the present Minister of Law in India has been given the
task of removing all the obsolete laws made during the British rule in India
but it is a daunting task for any one person so I am sure he has a team of
experts working on the subject.
One proposal that has been around for a while in India is
to bring a mobile justice system to the poor where they live where a judge can
solve the case quickly and move on to the next village. How it will be
implemented remains to be seen. Most of the cases in rural areas come from land
dispute that may often lead to violence. Then there are rape and sexual
domestic violence cases so mobile system can bring relief to the poor people.
In the Philippines, they have the barangay ( barrio) courts
where small disputes can be resolved often amicably without expensive lawyers
and court fees. I have taken some offending people to the barangay office
myself who had behaved badly.
The serious reform the justice system needs and demands
worldwide has many obstacles thrown at it by the people who have vested
interest in keeping the status quo.
Meanwhile people seeking redress to the injustice they
suffer are waiting.
Note : My blogs are also available in French, Spanish, German and Japanese languages at the following links as well as my biography:
La biografía de anil en español.
Comments