The Tribune

POLICE should no longer be responsible for prosecutions at the magistrate’s court, the Bahamas Constitution Commission recommended in their 250-page report to the government.

The proposed change was made as a part of the commission’s sweeping recommendations for constitutional judicial reform.

For many years, police prosecutors have been relied on to prosecute summary trials and conduct preliminary inquiries in the magistrate’s court in order to compensate for the shortage of public prosecutors available to the national prosecuting authority.

However, the Commission said that the system should be phased out, and that all prosecutions in magistrate courts should be conducted by the office of the Department of Public Prosecutions.

The commission also recommended that the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal should be rebranded under the umbrella “Supreme Court of Judicature”, made up of the High Court (formerly Supreme Court) and the Court of Appeal.

This body would be presided over by the Chief Justice as head of the judiciary. The commission said the call for this change came from the “higher echelons of the Judiciary”. The current structure, they claim, is – as described by one of the contributors – a “constitutional oxymoron”.

The commission also recommended that both the Chief Justice and President of the Court of Appeal should always be Bahamians. However, they did not think that this was a matter that needed to be outlined in the constitution, but rather enforced through “policy and practice.”

While rejecting the idea that magistrates should be given a protection of tenure similar to that of superior court judges, the commission said that they should be granted some form of tenure sufficient enough to achieve the constitutional guarantee of independence.

“The Commission thinks that it is a most unsatisfactory arrangement for magistrates, who are really at the fount of justice in this country, and who hear the majority of disputes that eventually reach the courts, to be without some institutional protection.

“The same imperatives which demand insulation for superior court judges against improper influence, also operate in the case of inferior judges, magistrates, chairmen of tribunals and the like,” the commission said.

They also recommended that the Magistracy be placed squarely under the judiciary and removed from the Public Service.

It also said that despite the lobbying of some labour unions, the Industrial Tribunal should not be elevated to a branch of the Supreme Court.