Commencement of Proceedings

• Author: George Belnavis
• Profession: Attorney-at-law of over 30 years practice at both the Public and Private Bar and is currently Senior Tutor II at the Norman Manley Law School, Kingston, where he has taught for nearly 20 years
• Pages: 1-14

Commencement of Proceedings / 1

Criminal trials in the Commonwealth Caribbean take one of two forms.

They are either trial on indictment or summary trials. Trial on indictment

is the method used for trying the more serious offences. The trial takes

place before a judge and jury in the High Court or Assizes and is presided

over by the judge who controls the course of the trial and is the sole arbiter

of matters of law and the admissibility of evidence in the case. Matters of

fact are decided by the jury, which consist of lay men and women drawn at

random from a broad cross section of the community. Jurors are usually

summoned for a fixed period and must accept and apply the law as it is

explained to them by the judge in his summing up at the end of the case.

They are the ones who render the verdict. The jury decides on the guilt or

innocence of the accused person.

Summary Trials take place in the Magistrates’ Courts which are created

by statute. At the commencement of the trial, the accused pleads guilty or

not guilty to a charge contained in an information. The case is heard and

decided by Magistrates who are judges of both fact and law. In the

Commonwealth Caribbean, most Magistrates are persons qualified in the

practice of law (‘qualified persons’) but there are exceptions to the general

rule.

All criminal proceedings begin in the Magistrates’ Court whether the

offence charged is indictable or summary, and there are two main methods

of commencing a prosecution.

The first method is open to the public – private citizens – and prosecuting

authorities alike, and consists of the laying of an information before a

Magistrate or Justice of the Peace. An information is simply a brief statement

of the offence which the person named is suspected of having committed.

It names the informant who is technically the prosecutor and is signed by

him. Most Commonwealth Caribbean police forces, when commencing a

prosecution by way of information, invariably name the Commissioner of

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Commencement of Proceedings

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