Functioning of the Haitian judicial system during the 2018-2019 year

The network and its regional structures watched the courts through the 2018-2019 judicial year and set out what they saw in eight parts: the general course of the year, the cases that marked the judicial chronicle, the scandals inside the system, the dysfunction of the peace courts with a close look at the Artibonite and the Ouest, a survey of the magistrates and their certification, appointments, the strike, and the criminal assizes. The chronicle includes the La Saline massacre, a seized firearms cargo, containers that disappeared at Port Lafiteau, the beating of a doctor at Hôpital La Paix, a burglary at the registry of the Port-au-Prince court of first instance, an order of no case to answer in favour of the President, and a senator implicated in money laundering. The scandals include the release of seven foreigners arrested on Haitian soil, the acquittal of a pastor tried for the rape of a minor, executive interference in the Café Trio killings, and a magistrate heard in a corruption case.

The assizes are counted. Sessions with and without a jury sat in sixteen of the eighteen first-instance jurisdictions, Cap-Haïtien and Grande Rivière du Nord excepted; at Cap-Haïtien the lawyers' work stoppage was given as the reason and for Grande Rivière du Nord no reason was given at all. Seven hundred and sixty-two cases were scheduled and six hundred and ninety-three heard, six hundred and sixteen verdicts were returned, and seven hundred and twenty people were tried: four hundred and twelve convicted, two hundred and thirty-one released and seventy-seven still awaiting a verdict. Only twenty-nine of those tried were women, 4.51 per cent. One hundred and twenty-two detainees went back to prison because their cases were adjourned, and seventy-eight people were convicted of sexual crimes, fourteen of them against minors. The effect on detention was small: the pretrial rate fell 2.19 points, from 74.57 per cent on 14 September 2018 to 72.37 per cent on 12 September 2019, which is the figure the following year's report opens from. The network's verdict is that the year was ordinary and changed nothing in the judicial routine, and it asks that investigating magistrates work in the order files arrive, that deans distribute cases against the load already in each cabinet, that correctional and criminal hearings be intensified, that every peace court and the judicial inspectorate of the CSPJ be made to function, and that the recommendations on renewing magistrates' mandates and the demands of magistrates, clerks and bailiffs be acted on.