Vice-president Laurie Queripel said he would be raising the matter at the next committee meeting due to concerns he had with the process.
Last month, it was revealed that around 40 trials were waiting to be heard – a seven-fold increase in the last two years.
Judges had raised concerns over the time cases were taking to come to court and last week Judge Graeme McKerrell said had a Crown advocate not rescued a case file, it could still be sat in the Criminal Justice Unit’s office.
Deputy Queripel said there was cause for concern.
‘The matter will be raised at the next Scrutiny Management Committee meeting, on the 30th of this month, with a view to considering a Scrutiny investigation and possible hearing to explore the issues around the backlog and the process,’ he said.
Scrutiny president Chris Green, who is an advocate, said he could not comment due to a conflict of interest and anything relating to the matter would be handled by his vice-president.
In the case in which the man was fined £1, Declan Glass admitted behaving in a disorderly manner by slapping a man in North Plantation, St Peter Port.
He entered that plea in June 2017, but at the same time denied resisting two police officers.
In the Magistrate’s Court last week, Crown advocate Chris Dunford said Glass had been released on conditional bail in June last year and in July 2017 the file was sent to the law officers for review.
After five days they sent it back and a trial date was set for November.
That was cancelled at the request of the defence and in December the Criminal Justice Unit had tried to contact one of the officers in the case.
Crown Advocate Dunford criticised the CJU’s record-keeping.
In this case the police officer had left the island and CJU decided that nothing could be done until he was contacted, so the file was just left.
In June, Crown advocate Dunford visited the CJU office to collect 15 files because he was concerned the cases had been left so long. He described the delay as ‘unconscionable’.
A Guernsey Police spokesman said it had seen a marked increase in not guilty pleas.
It remained committed to progressing cases through the court system as efficiently as possible, he said, and the force had recently appointed a full-time member of staff to co-ordinate the trial date-setting process.
You need to be logged in to comment.