A Supreme Court nominee, Justice Philip Bright Mensah, has made case for career magistrates to be given the opportunity to enter the Law School for upgrade rather than dissolving the whole programme.
According to him scrapping the career magistrate programme would create a vacuum in the underserved areas where they are put to superintend over the magistrate courts.
The nominee made this suggestions in response to questions while being vetted yesterday in Accra.
Justice Mensah stated that Career Magistrates were first sitting at Tribunal and between 2000 and 2002 the course was scrapped with over 70 to 100 of them in the system.
He said the time has come for Judges in mining areas to learn the Chinese language to help address challenges confronting several courts due to the lack of reliable interpreters.
Justice Mensah noted that the suspects when arrested would claim they don’t speak English but Chinese and the Judges cannot also speak Chinese thus hindering justice delivery.
“That is why the Judges must be supported by experts to learn Chinese to help prosecute the suspects,” he added.
The nominee urged for closer collaboration between the courts and security agencies in mining as both institutions are fighting the same cause.
In a related development, Justice Sir Dominic Adjei has expressed reservations about the practice where sitting Judges are made to sit as additional Judges on cases.
According to him, the country has enough Circuit Court Judges capable of handling such cases instead of allowing a sitting Judge to act in that capacity.
The nominee also advocated refining the standard for selection of Jurors.
He said per the law the Jurors must be literate in English and well versed in the jury system but most of them lack that capacity hence the call for reforms to help people appreciate the system.
As to whether the Chief Justice should act in absence of the Executive, Justice Adjei said it’s not advisable because it would be a bad practice and violate the principle of separation of powers.
He said the constitution explicitly states that the Vice President is to act in absence of the President while the Speaker is to also act in the absence of the Vice but nothing on the CJ’s role.
The nominee also disagrees with the mandatory imposition of the death penalty, explaining that Ghana is already a signatory to the African Charter against death sentence.
BY LAWRENCE VOMAFA-AKPALU
