Over the past two years I've spent more time in a courtroom than time with my family, by a long shot.
It's not because I just can't get on the right side of the law, and I don't see judges as often as the lawyers in town, but as the court reporter, plenty of working time is spent sitting in a chilly courtroom straining to hear what exactly is going on.
This past Monday was much more of the same, with its rare but inevitable interesting moments hidden amongst several hours of dry proceedings. The most refreshing thing was to hear the sitting judge vent many of the frustrations I have watching the local court beat.
That is that things in the court system are happening, but not even at a snail's pace. The justice system moves forward at an evolutionary pace.
For the majority of items on a court docket, nothing happens. Most matters are simply adjourned to a later date, at which time they are adjourned again, ad infinitum. I'm not here to blame any of the lawyers for clogging up the system.
But it was refreshing to hear Judge Kenn Bellerose inquire as to why it has taken an impaired driving charge from May 2011 to October 2012 to go without any sort of resolution. There were no pleas entered, it was simply adjourned to a date in November.
He was assured by the Crown that the matter would be moving forward on that day with a plea. A guilty plea could end the matter, while a not-guilty plea would require a trial in four or five months. There may not be anybody who actually enforces a plea on that day, so it's quite possible another adjournment is in order when the time comes.
I'm not familiar with the specific case, but in that year and a half, it's possible that the matter has been called in court and adjourned a dozen or more times. The judge suggested with a flair of hyperbole that there were two trees worth of paper for the file.
Maybe there is no way that particular matter can be dealt with quicker than it is, but it will probably require more than one more appearance in the courtroom.
This isn't strictly a problem in Estevan's provincial court system. It's happening across the country. I don't think the lawyers in Estevan are unorganized or lazy. Part of the problem is more likely because there are far too few lawyers to deal with the elevating crime levels in the Energy City.
I'm not privy to all, or any, of the conversations between them as they work to some kind of agreement on how to move a case forward, but certainly at some point feet have to be held to the fire in order to get things moving along. I wish a cranky court reporter had that kind of clout, but I'm going to have to defer those powers to our judges.
It's nice to see Bellerose ask questions about the pace of the judicial process, but ultimately, his bewilderment at the speed of the court system isn't going to move things along any faster.
There is one suggestion I can make to everyone in order to help unclog the courts: please just stop breaking the law.
