AI could revolutionise Court of Appeal, claims chief justice

Jamaica’s Court of Appeal is “ideally placed” for the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the settlement of cases, Chief Justice Bryan Sykes has asserted.

Justice Sykes, who was speaking on Tuesday at the launch of the Pro-Jam III Project, a court reform initiative endorsed by the Pan American Development Foundation, argued that the use of AI will boost efficiency.

“The decisions from the Court of Appeal, if you look at them, you will see that very few of them really break new ground. I always like to use the example of our Gun Court cases and our gun murders, [for] 99.9 per cent, the issue is identification,” he said.

He said AI can be used to identify and evaluate whether evidence matches up to the legal standard.

“Because essentially, artificial intelligence is pattern recognition. We now have enough cases where it can be trained to work in our environment,” he said. “Technologically, that is not something that is beyond us, it can be done. It is not a substitute for the human beings to read, but it can aid and even make us more efficient in the handling of appeals in the Court of Appeal.”

Sykes, who has been pressing for improved efficiency in the courts through digital transformation, stated that ultimately, the objective is to have all courts meet the international standard of a net backlog of cases under five per cent and a gross backlog of under 10 per cent.

“What that means is that our case clearance rate must be over 100 per cent. This is one of the few instances where 99 per cent is not good enough. So what our statistician indicated to us is ... that if you have a case clearance rate of about 98 or 99 per cent for about two years, you add 32 days to each case, so that is how dramatic inefficiency is,” the chief justice said.

COSTLY ON GDP

According to him, this level of disorganised work costs Jamaica two per cent of its gross domestic product annually.

To improve productivity, Justice Sykes prescribed three case management dates, and charged that the forensic services “have to get their act together to get it done”.

A similar sentiment was shared by Justice Minister Delroy Chuck, who noted that “too many cases are delayed due to the failure of investigators to complete the investigative process and secure the relevant evidence to substantiate the charges laid, thereby ensuring the successful prosecution of the accused”.

But sharing Sykes’ goal of a more efficient court system, the justice minister lauded the introduction of a differentiated case management system, which he noted has improved case management flow and created a more effective court system.

He pointed to a clearance rate of 124.58 per cent in 2022 in the parish courts, adding that it had increased to 143 per cent in the latter part of the year. The clearance rate in the Court of Appeal was 111 per cent in 2022, and moved to 117 in 2023.

But Chuck noted that despite these gains, there is still room for improvement.

“Although the country’s court system has exceeded this target, challenges remain in relation to matters that have not transitioned through the system in a timely manner. That is cases that would have been before the parish courts for 24 months or more and, therefore, form part of its backlog,” he said.

Further, he said that in the Gun Court, there was 100 per cent clearance in 2021 and 2022, but it fell to 81 per cent in 2023.

He expressed hope that over time, the period for clearing cases will eventually be reduced to 18 months.

According to him, the vast majority of cases coming into the parish courts are disposed of in 12 months.

“For us to achieve world-class standards, it is important that all cases in the Supreme, Gun, and Circuit courts are disposed of within three years. This three-year disposition, my proposal, should be the maximum time for criminal cases to remain,” he said.

sashana.small@gleanerjm.com