Chief Justice pledges to take ‘justice to the people’ with introduction of district courts

Chief Justice Margaret Ramsay-Hale has announced a mission to decentralise Cayman’s courts system, through the introduction of district courts across Grand Cayman, the first of which is planned for West Bay later this year.

Ramsay-Hale made the announcement while addressing scores of members of Cayman’s legal fraternity, political leaders and other special dignitaries during the annual Grand Court opening on Wednesday, 11 Jan.

“I’m excited by this because… the whole idea of circuit courts is to take justice to the people,” said Ramsay-Hale, who noted that the West Bay pilot court would serve as a replacement for the traffic court, which was being held in the Constitution Hall, formerly known as the George Town Town Hall.

According to Ramsay-Hale, Constitution Hall, which had served as one of the judiciary’s nine courtrooms, was recently taken out of service amidst the need for repairs.

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The concept of district courts or circuit courts is not entirely new in Cayman. Once a month, a magistrate flies to Cayman Brac where summary matters are dealt with for residents of the Sister Islands.

“If we establish a [West Bay] district court now to replace the town hall, it gives the opportunity to explore a district court in Bodden Town,” said the Chief Justice. “These district courts would supplement what would now become the George Town District Court.”

Globally, the use of district courts is well established in larger jurisdictions, where travelling to a central location for court proceedings is often impractical for a multitude of reasons.

Ramsay-Hale noted that a sustained pivot towards ‘paperless’ courts has laid the foundation to make such a development possible.

“It doesn’t require the establishment of any other registries, we are going paperless, your registry is in…  your handbag, that is your laptop, because everything will be filed online,” she said, adding that by taking matters out of town, it would address infrastructure issues, including the lack of parking in downtown George Town.

But the idea of district courts is not without its challenges. Cayman’s courts often see defendants who find themselves with multiple matters across various courts, some having cases before the criminal Summary and Grand Courts, the Traffic Court and Family Court.

To assist, the courts have resorted to adjourning cases to the same date to keep defendants’ matters together and prevent them from having to return to court multiple times per week until each matter is finished.

These problems are exacerbated by Cayman’s small pool of criminal lawyers – who often find themselves darting from one courtroom to another, as they represent multiple clients across different courts on any given day.

Based on Ramsay-Hale’s indications, the plan for district courts is still in its initial phase and so no location was identified, nor was a timeline given.

Ultimately, once the West Bay District Court is opened, and the challenges are ironed out, any expansion of the programme will depend on the data gathered by the judicial administration as part of its larger ‘blueprint for excellence’.

Blueprint for excellence

Ramsay-Hale announced her intentions for a ‘blueprint for excellence’ during her historic swearing-in as Cayman’s first female Chief Justice in Oct. 2022.

During her inaugural address, she said her goal was to introduce a quality management system framework which was designed to “help the courts improve its performance and efficiency”.

The overall blueprint can largely be broken down into three main sub-categories namely: 10 core judicial systems, seven areas of excellence and 11 global measures of excellence.

The categories are derived from the International Consortium for Court Excellence – a global body that provides courts with tools to increase overall efficiency in several areas, which Ramsay-Hale said she hopes to use to address the perception of Cayman’s courts.

“The World Bank keeps data on different things, and under the section called ‘Rule of law’… we are at [a score of] 75,” she said. “When it was first introduced in 1996, we were at 91. So, this will help us to recover that ground.”

She added, “It’s not about judgments, because there is no question about our judgments and our judges… are without parallel across the world; but it measures… perception of accessibility [and] timeliness. It is not measured on whether people are getting it but whether they perceive it and so this is what we hope to address.”

The latest figures suggests that 2,200 cases were filed by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions across a variety of Cayman’s courts in 2022. The outcome of each of these cases was not announced. However, a partial break down of criminal cases suggests that 102 indictments were filed in the Grand Court and 872 in the Summary Court.

According to the Chief Justice, 104 Grand Court criminal cases and 943 Summary Court criminal cases were dealt with last year, which she said shows that the courts are capably dispensing justice.

The exact number of cases that were brought forward from previous years was not made clear.