During the coffee break, State Counsel in the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Paul Prescod, discussing details from the morning session with his colleagues State Counsel Tito Holder (left), State Counsel Eleazar Williams (third left) and Principal State Counsel, JoyAnn Catwell. (J Bishop/BGIS)
Chairman of the Law Reform Commission, Sir David Simmons, emphasised this on Monday, September 9, at the opening session of a two-day symposium at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre (LESC), Two Mile Hill, St. Michael, where Barbados continued the process towards amending its Criminal Procedure Rules.
The event provided those in the legal profession with the opportunity to discuss any comments or suggestions received by the Law Reform Commission, with a view to amending the draft Criminal Procedure Rules.
Sir David, in proffering the rationale for the symposium and reflecting on his mandate, reminded the grouping that last year, Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley, insisted that the country should have new Criminal Procedure Rules by July 2023.
He said: “The rules, as you would have noticed, are couched in simple everyday language, just as the Civil Procedure Rules are so couched because fortunately, it is my legal and judicial philosophy that the law should be demystified. And, there are too many people who have glory in the fact that they use complex language and that… the old Civil Procedure Rules, were fashioned in a very complex grammatical and linguistic setting.
“I think, and indeed, I am more fortified in this view, the more I read the legislation from Australia, that law can be simplified, and it does not have to be spoken or written in complex terms, beyond the intelligence of the ordinary citizen.
And these rules are therefore crafted in language that is easily intelligible to somebody who gives a little attention to them.”
Commending members of the Law Reform Commission for undertaking the responsibility “to have new rules prepared”, the former Chief Justice noted that on June 13, this year, copies of the rules were sent to the Chief Justice, Commissioner of Police, Director of Public Prosecutions, among others.
He further told the gathering that the Attorney General wished to have the Rules Committee enact the final version of the rules before the commencement of, or early in the new legal year, which begins in October. He added that comments may be submitted to the address of the Law Reform Commission or its email address.
Sir David, who was assisted in the amendment process by Attorney General Dale Marshall and Member of the Law Commission, Sir Elliot Mottley, over the two days at the LESC, stressed the exercise was aimed at ensuring everyone who attended was “au courant” with the rules and understood their intent and purpose.
Elaborating, he stated: “Because you can read at your leisure, and you won’t know them [rules] until you start to work and get a practical feel for the rules. But it is important for an understanding that we do this exercise. So, bear with us, but we’re going through these rules in depth later, so that we come away with a first understanding of the rules and their nature. After we are finished, during this two-day period, we will clean up infelicities and errors as we go along.”
The opening session of the symposium also involved a presentation from US-UK Criminal Justice Advisor to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean US-UK Criminal Justice Reform Project, Sarah Abraham. In her presentation, she contextualised the rules to the legal profession and explained the setting within which the said rules would operate as well as their several objectives.
Following the symposium, the document will be presented to Chief Justice, Leslie Haynes, as Chairman of the Rules Committee, to be signed off on. It is also expected that the Office of the Chief Parliamentary Counsel will fine tune the draft and afterwards the work of the Law Reform Commission will come to an end.