Justice Anin Yeboah
The Chief Justice (CJ) has reiterated that the safety measures put in place to curtail the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) which affected the delivery of justice are still in place.
To this effect, judges and court managers have been mandated to limit the number of persons in the courtroom to judges, lawyers and clients whose cases are due for hearing.
Judges and magistrates are also to only hear cases which are of “extreme urgency and as far as possible, exercise great restraint in remanding accused persons in order to avoid overcrowding the prisons and cells.”
They are to also discourage the appearance of convicts and remanded accused persons in court.
The CJ, Justice Anin Yeboah, in a press statement indicated that although the partial lockdown in parts of Greater Accra and Greater Kumasi had been lifted by the President, the restrictions on the number of persons allowed in a courtroom at a time still remained.
Earlier Directive
The CJ on March 16, 2020 issued a directive restricting access to the law courts to only litigants, their lawyers as well as witnesses in cases scheduled for a particular day as part of COVID-19 measures.
The CJ then directed judges and magistrates to practise “strict case management techniques such that only parties and witnesses in cases listed to be heard on particular dates would be allowed into the courtroom to avoid large gatherings.”
Further Directive
Justice Yeboah, in a further directive on March 20, said, “We are operating in very unusual times with no precedents to guide us” and urged stakeholders in the justice delivery system to work together to ensure that the needs of the citizenry for justice were met adequately.
The directive then urged lawyers to attend court without their clients and request for long adjournments to the end of May, June or July 2020.
It said lawyers in a particular case could agree on a particular date and communicate same to the registrar of the court in writing without having to travel to the court to take dates for hearing.
In cases which have been partly heard, only lawyers, witnesses and parties would be allowed to enter the courtroom, and urged registrars to follow the directives.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak