Investigation of Complaint Against Court of Appeal President Completed
Tue, 2014-09-23
The Bermuda Police Service has conducted a full and comprehensive investigation into the complaint made against the President of the Court of Appeal and the Registrar of the Supreme Court by a number of complainants under the collective name of the ‘Civil Justice Advocacy Group’ (CJAG). A file was reviewed by the Director of Public Prosecutions and a decision has been taken that no prosecution will be commenced in this matter.
The investigation determined that the President of the Court of Appeal had instructed the audio recording system to be switched off for a period of time in 2011/12. This was done, with the exception of an anomalous date where the system captured a particular court matter. The complainant in that case was subsequently provided with an audio tape of the recording. There is no evidence that any other recordings were made in respect of other cases that form the CJAG complaint. It follows that audio recordings were not ‘withheld or destroyed,’ because they did not exist in the first place.
There is no legislative requirement to audio record the proceedings of the courts, and the President of the Court of Appeal was within his legal rights to turn off the recording system. The investigation found no criminal conduct in the making of this decision, either on the part of the President or the Registrar. As such, any offences that are alleged under the Criminal Code in relation to this matter are unfounded.
The investigation also found that, whilst audio recordings of the cases did not exist, hand written records and other documents of the Judges of the Court of Appeal are on record with the Supreme Court Registrar and remain available to the parties upon request.
