Speedy trial

As remarkable as watching “Blade Runner” Oscar Pistorius squirm and throw up at his murder trial is the announcement that the court proceedings will be held from March 3 to 20.

This is remarkable, of course, only for Pinoys who are used to seeing trials drag on from March 3, 1996 for example, until March 20, 2016.

Pistorius was charged with murdering his girlfriend on Feb. 14 last year at his Pretoria home. He was granted bail eight days later. The dates for the ongoing trial were set in August.

The wait for his trial to start may still be too long for those with highly efficient criminal justice systems such as Singapore and Hong Kong.

For Pinoys frustrated over decades of waiting for court decisions, however, the South African criminal justice system is enviably quick.

For both the accuser and accused, for both victim and offender, and for society in general, justice delayed is justice denied. We keep saying this but I fear I will never see it applied in our country in my lifetime.

Our civil justice system is just as bad as the criminal process, and probably worse in the opinion of the business community.

If we want to give more teeth to the fight against corruption, if we’re serious about working for inclusive growth and luring more job-generating investments, the justice system must be overhauled.

The system’s glacial pace is a national embarrassment. It’s inefficient, it’s unpredictable, it’s corrupt. The system badly needs fixing.

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“Better civil justice systems can boost investment, competition, innovation and growth,” according to a study last year prepared by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). “Well-functioning judicial systems play a crucial role in determining economic performance.”

Predictable justice means fewer appeals, which can ease the caseload of judges.

What can be done? The OECD study, which deals with civil justice but can also cover criminal proceedings, noted factors that may result in shorter trials. Apart from “active management” of the progress of cases and better compensation to hire more judges, the study cited investments in court computerization.

This “informatization” (a term used by the OECD) of court proceedings includes setting up websites where the progress of cases can be tracked, and making available electronic forms and registers for litigation.

The executive can do its part by giving the judiciary the necessary funding. Computerization, more judges and courtrooms will surely be welcomed by judiciary personnel. Those mountains of documents eat up limited space in courthouses and are fire hazards.

Court computerization was initiated several years ago but its scope has been limited by budget constraints.

Those responsible for supervising the judiciary must also do more to discourage dilatory tactics that benefit only the lawyers and guilty defendants who want to put off punishment. Surely it’s not an impossible task. It can be done in Hong Kong, where one of our congressmen, Ronald Singson, was arrested for drug trafficking in July 2010, convicted in February 2011 after he pleaded guilty to a lesser offense, sent to prison and then freed in January 2012. That’s record time in the Philippines.

Now Singson’s got his life back, and he’s even regained his congressional seat.

In contrast, consider how the Maguindanao massacre trial is crawling along, more than four years after it happened.

The Supreme Court, instead of setting the example in holding speedy trials, is doing the opposite, sitting on the Reproductive Health law and issuing temporary restraining orders that can last more than a year.

Frustration over snail-paced justice has to be one of the reasons why there seems to be little public sympathy for those detained without bail on charges of large-scale corruption who invoke illness in seeking their liberty. People fear that the detention while on trial might be the only punishment that will ever be imposed on the accused.

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Corruption and ill-gotten wealth cases can now be helped along by instruments for international cooperation that were set up under the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC), which is a legally binding pact that the Philippines and over 130 other states have signed and ratified.

Under the framework of UNCAC, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has partnered with the World Bank Group for the Stolen Assets Recovery or StAR Initiative. StAR assists states in building capacity for the recovery of hidden wealth.

UNODC is also working with the Austrian government to set up an International Anti-Corruption Academy.

Both the UN and World Bank have given priority to the fight against corruption, considering it a threat to democracy and a hindrance to economic development and poverty alleviation. Corruption deters foreign direct investment. At the same time, local small businesses, according to the UNODC, “often find it impossible to overcome the ‘start-up costs’ required because of corruption.”

“Corruption attacks the foundation of democratic institutions by distorting electoral processes, perverting the rule of law and creating bureaucratic quagmires whose only reason for existing is the soliciting of bribes,” the UNODC declares.

Does this sound depressingly familiar?

You can access the UNODC’s anti-corruption portal called TRACK, or Tools and Resources for Anti-Corruption Knowledge, for the legal library of UNCAC.

Among the thrusts of this global effort is to fight judicial corruption. According to the UNODC, “an ethically compromised judiciary means that the legal and institutional mechanism designed to curb corruption, however well-targeted, efficient or honest, remains crippled.”

For Pinoys, a clean, efficient judicial system does not have to be an impossible dream.