Functioning of the Haitian judicial system during the 2022-2023 year

The judicial year 2022-2023 opened on 3 October 2022 in a difficult socio-political context, and the report takes the events that marked it in order. The certification process recommended that the executive remove thirty magistrates from the judicial system, five of them prosecutors, for want of moral integrity or because their academic qualifications did not fit the post. The dean of the Port-au-Prince court of first instance and another named magistrate were certified despite damning certification reports. Judges were appointed to the Cour de cassation unconstitutionally, which the authorities justified as making the court functional. A magistrate was placed on availability for a release he granted.

The report then works through the scandals inside the judiciary, the work stoppages of judicial staff during the year, and the state of the cases the network monitors: the assassination of former president Jovenel Moïse, the killing of the bâtonnier Monferrier Dorval, the killings of Antoinette Duclair and Diego Charles, the La Saline massacre, the Plaine du Cul-de-Sac massacre and the Cité Soleil massacre. Its recommendations include closing the judicial investigations into the massacres committed over the past several years, setting the number of trials against the number of people awaiting judgment in each jurisdiction, holding criminal assizes with a jury in all eighteen jurisdictions, and reducing the irregularities recorded during criminal sittings.