Wayward magistrates to face disciplinary sanctions

It has been announced that recalcitrant Magistrates attached to the various legal departments in the South West Region shall have themselves to blame when disciplinary sanctions descend on them from the powers that be more especially from the higher judicial council.

This note of caution was made by the Attorney General of the south West Court of Appeal, Chief Justice Essombe Emile, during a coordination meeting in Kumba.

The implementation of the new Criminal Procedure Code, CPC that went into force in 2007 has record a lot of shortcomings in its implementation by some Magistrates, especially State Counsel who draft charges and indictment and forward same to criminal courts.

It’s against this backdrop that, Magistrates in the South West Region who exercise their duties at the various legal departments of the courts have been urged to strictly implement the Criminal Procedure Code, CPC, in order to deliver justice in its full sense.

Holding under the theme: ‘The Institution of Criminal Proceedings’, the Attorney General, disclosed that it’s the legal duty of the legal department to ensure the enforcement of laws, regulations and judgments and in criminal matters to institute and carry out prosecutions.

He maintained that the coordination meetings shall hold periodically with auxiliaries of the legal department who include judicial police officers, so as to view the way the law is being applied the shortcomings, and then take corrective measures and harmonise the way the law is applied throughout the region.

The PG, placing the theme of the coordination meeting under consideration, took time off in a rather interactive manner drilled the Magistrates on their role in instituting criminal proceedings as enshrined in the CPC.

He told his collaborators that it’s the duty of the legal department to initiate proceedings, though the code in certain cases gives injured persons from the commission of an offence to do same either through direct summon or by private Prosecution before the courts.

He lambasted that what he has noticed in the field is some variation in the manner of instituting and even prosecuting criminal actions stemming in particular from the seeming application of the repealed Criminal Procedure Ordinance, CPO.

But in essence, what are the methods of instituting criminal actions before the courts, the PG reechoed for the last time that, it can either be by way of direct summons or through flagrant Delicto Procedure, Private Prosecution or a complaint with a civil party to the Examining Magistrate.