The intervention by prosecutor Janek Forbes into the debate over the insufficient use of plea bargaining in Jamaica expands the opportunity for a fulsome review of the reasons, including how the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) contributes to this failure.
The investigative capabilities of the police, and the efficiency of supporting infrastructure, must also be robustly scrutinised to determine how they may be, or are, contributing to the perceived failures.
Put another way, this should be a multi-agency analysis that identifies shortcomings and proposes fixes that ultimately translate to a more efficient judicial system and a surer and faster delivery of justice.
Chief Justice Bryan Sykes initially triggered this discussion with his warning that the Gun Court was in danger of returning to a situation of backlog (the standard is for cases to be resolved within two years) because of changes to the gun law that imposed a minimum 15-year sentence for illegal possession of a firearm, no matter what type of gun, or part of a gun, was in the person’s possession.
Predictably, Justice Sykes said, the law was proving to be a deterrent to accused persons opting to plead guilty rather than taking their chances with trials. Currently, over 84 per cent of the cases that go before the High Court division of the Gun Court are disposed of within the benchmarked time frame, but, recently, that court’s clearance rate, that is, the difference between new cases filed and those disposed of, has been on a downward trajectory, falling by 19 percentage points last year to 62.72 per cent. This is in a context where only a fifth of the charges for gun crimes end in convictions, which include guilty pleas.
The Supreme Court’s statistical review for 2025 expanded on the chief justice’s observation.
Said the report: “A conviction rate of 20.11 per cent, coupled with a three-year downward trajectory, suggests systemic friction in the transition from charge to sentencing. When one out of every five charges results in a conviction, the ‘deterrent effect’ of the court is significantly weakened. A conviction rate suggests that defendants may feel they have an 80 per cent chance of walking free if they go to trial.
“This further disincentivises guilty pleas. Additionally, the drop in convictions may stem from the quality of evidence presented at the preliminary stages. Many disposed charges are being dismissed before trial, suggesting that weaknesses may exist at the point of arrest or filing.”
MIRRORED ELSEWHERE
The Gun Court is not unique. It is mirrored elsewhere in the criminal justice system, albeit on a larger scale, as demonstrated by the data from the Home Circuit Court. The clearance rate in that court is 53 per cent and its conviction rate is even lower than the Gun Court’s.
According to the Supreme Court’s 2025 statistical review, the conviction rate in that court was 18.32 per cent, a marginal increase of one percentage point over the previous year. The highest conviction rate was for sexual intercourse with a person under 16, at 32.15 per cent, an increase of 1.65 percentage points. Even with an increase of 3.5 per cent, only 19.5 per cent of murder cases ended in convictions.
It is against this backdrop that the Supreme Court’s Michaelmas term began last week with 944 cases on its docket, and the realistic observation by Mr Forbes, a deputy DPP, that all these matters could not be tried during the three-month session. The majority will be traversed to join older cases and be joined by newer ones. Indeed, 644, or 71 per cent, of the listed cases were from the Easter Term, while 145 were from the Hillary Term.
But, as Mr Forbes noted, “not all need to be tried”. He suggested that prosecutors and defence attorneys make greater use of available case-management systems, including plea negotiations, to lessen the clogging of the courts.
Apart from legislation providing sentence discounts for guilty pleas, Parliament in 2017 passed what was framed as an upgraded plea-bargaining law. It allows for negotiations between prosecutors and defendants on charges and recommended sentences. Like its older version, the law appears to have been little used.
SLOW PACE
Tamika Harris, the president of the Advocates’ Association of Jamaica, blamed the failure, or limited use, of plea negotiations primarily on the slow pace of investigations and the preparation and readiness of case files.
“My difficulty is that counsel cannot effectively engage in case management until the cases are prepared,” Ms Harris said.
Obviously, defence attorneys want to have a clear picture of the strength of prosecutors’ cases before advising their clients on pleas and/or cooperating on cases. Slow completion of case files, whether because of shortcomings within the ODPP or slow-moving investigations and bureaucratic hiccups, would affect the posture of defendants.
However, at some point, prosecutors believe they are prepared enough to take their cases to court, which should mean that the case file is sufficiently complete to form the basis of negotiations. That this seems to happen infrequently may also indicate rational decision-making by lawyers and clients, such as betting on the low conviction rates in the courts.
In the interest of justice, however, the whole environment must be reviewed to eliminate, as far as possible, the bottlenecks to the effective operation of the system.
