RNDDH report on the functioning of the Haitian judicial system during the 2019-2020 year

Protests, lockdown operations, a precarious security situation, the arrival of Covid-19 and repeated work stoppages by judicial staff make the 2019-2020 judicial year, in the network's judgement, a very thin one. That near-total inertia did not prevent a judicial chronicle rich in scandal. The report treats the stoppage of work, the changes in the judiciary, the state's prosecution of SOGENER, the arrest of a former deputy, a complaint against the President, the return to Haiti of a man convicted in absentia at the second Raboteau massacre trial and arrested on the tarmac, the assassination of Monferrier Dorval and the magistrates who died during the year. It then sets out the scandals: misappropriation by the heads of the Fort-Liberté jurisdiction, a body disappearing from the Port-au-Prince deanery, releases obtained in the wake of Covid-19 including that of a former deputy whose case was pending, beatings and threats in the presence of a justice of the peace, a blockage at the Cap-Haïtien court and assaults by a named judge.

It examines the criteria adopted for releasing detainees and the ad hoc hearings held, the functioning of the peace courts including those sitting in unacceptable premises, the output of the courts of first instance, the judges not renewed, and the chronic files that never move: the La Saline massacre, the dilapidation of PetroCaribe funds, the assassination of a journalist, the Grand-Ravine police operation, the DERMALOG contract and others. On the numbers, the share of people in pretrial detention rose from 72.37 to 78.67 per cent, an increase of 6.3 points, while the convicted share fell from 27.62 to 21.32 per cent. The network holds it unacceptable that the Port-au-Prince deanery distributes files on the basis of acquaintance, protecting those in power and their allies while spectacular cases stagnate, and concludes that through the impunity it sustains the judiciary actively participates in the insecurity and in the trivialisation of the right to life.