The time needed to resolve criminal cases in court has lengthened significantly
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has cited the uptick in choice of jury trials is a cause of court system delays, reported the NZ Herald.
The minister said that he was looking to methods of lowering this volume. As per data published under the Official Information Act, defendants have increasingly opted for jury trials over judge-only trials for category 3 offences.
According to Ministry of Justice statistics, the time needed to resolve a criminal case in the district court has extended from an average of 119 days to 178 days over the past five years. The duration for a jury trial in the district court now averages 497 days, up from 348 days.
Goldsmith indicated that the threshold for choosing jury trials is one aspect of a wider batch of reforms being considered.
Chris Macklin of the Law Society’s Criminal Law Committee said in a statement published by the Herald that the category 3 threshold of two years was “higher than the old threshold, which was three months, so almost anything that had prison on it could be a jury trial before the Criminal Procedure Act went in”. He pointed to the Criminal Procedure Act 2011, which stipulates the category of defendants eligible to opt for a jury trial.
“The assumption was that, by putting up the threshold, there would be a decrease in jury trials, but that has not been the outcome”, he said.
Macklin added that resources were necessary to sustain the demand for jury trials.
“Finding a time to convene 12 random people takes a fair whack of time in and of itself. If people are determined to maintain the right to a trial by jury in the same form that we currently have it, then the only answer can be more resources. More courtrooms, more judges qualified to preside over juries and therefore more ability to turn over jury trials more promptly”, he said in a statement published by the Herald.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon echoed the sentiment regarding the need for a more efficient justice system. In a statement published by the Herald, he told radio host Mike Hosking, “There’s a big backlog there. Part of it will be whether it’s judge or jury trialled, but essentially things like new technology, using tele-presence, all those sorts of things. We’ve got to be able to embrace more modern tools to get people through the system much quicker”.
