Chief Justice asks Judiciary to protect rights of citizens

Accra, May 18, GNA - The Chief Justice, Mrs Justice Georgina Wood on Tuesday charged members of the Judiciary to take up their constitutional responsibility by ensuring that the criminal justice is well served. She said the unwholesome practice of judges who connive with police prosecutors and detectives to throw persons charged with relatively minor offences into remand prison without sufficient and just cause must cease. Mrs Wood was speaking at the "Justice For All Programme", at the Nsawam Prison in the Eastern Region.

The programme is a special court sitting setup by the Judiciary Service in collaboration with key stakeholders in the criminal justice system. The Attorney General's Department, Ghana Police Service, Ghana Prison Service and the Ghana Bar Association are collaborating to review the large number of cases involving remand prisoners who have been languishing in custody for many years without trial.

The Remand Review project aimed at decongesting the prison and bring justice to persons long been forgotten by the courts is chaired by Mr Justice B.T. Aryettey, a Supreme Court Judge with funding from the United Nations Developing Programme.

It would continue till the end of the 2009/10 legal year before it would be reviewed.

Mrs Wood said the high population of remand prisoners is a clear indication that "we (Judiciary) are more in breach of the country's constitutional provisions than their observance". "Each of us actively engaged in the administration of criminal justice has contributed to this anomalous situation. For this reason, the responsibility lies on us to collaboratively work to find a concrete solution to this problem, which sadly, does constitute a blot on our human right record," she stressed.

Mrs Wood also called on the general public to stop using their influence on officials within the justice system to use bail as an instrument of punishment, settling personal scores or exacting the payment of civil debts craftily camouflaged as criminal cases. She said there was no reason why a court must remand an accused person into custody pending trial, if there are no valid reasons showing that such a person would not appear to stand trial.

Mrs Wood said the real challenge however lies with the non-bailable offence such as robbery, murder, narcotics, rape and defilement. She said even in such cases the courts have held that notwithstanding the ouster of the time honoured discretionary power to grant bail in such cases, bail would nonetheless be granted whenever it is demonstrated that there has been an unreasonable delay in the trial or where the facts presented upon arraignment do not support the offence with which the accused was charged. Meanwhile, out of 140 remand prisoners who appeared before the Special Review courts setup at the Nsawam Prison 27 of them who have been languishing in jail several years without trial were discharged, others were granted bail and while the rest were to be processed to appear before the courts. 18 May 10