Sharp rise in murder cases is worrying,says McDowell

A SHARP rise in the number of murder cases coming before the courts was described yesterday by the justice minister as worrying, but he claimed it was reassuring that the garda detection rate is high.

Minister Michael McDowell, speaking after he launched the Court Service’s 2002 annual report, claimed six-monthly crime figures to be released next week will show a decline in the murder rate.

Mr McDowell also said the figures will reveal that the number of public order offences, steadily increasing in recent years, is also dropping.

The figures also showed that waiting times for murder and rape trials halved during 2002, despite an increase in the number of cases received. Cases took about 12 months to get to the courtroom, compared with 24 months the previous year.

The number of Central Criminal Courts dealing with murder and rape cases was doubled to four in late 2002 in order to cut delays in cases coming to trial. A total of 58 cases were heard last year, a drop of one from 2001.

There remained at the start of the year a large number of outstanding rape cases, although down 11 to 151 from the previous year. One person was sentenced to life imprisonment while five were given 10 years or more, the report states.

Court officials hope to reduce waiting times to just 12 weeks over the next couple of years, it emerged.

Of over 8,000 people charged with public order offences in Dublin and Limerick, 400 got jail sentences.

The number of murder cases coming before by the Central Criminal Court in 2002 was 55, up from just 31 the previous year, a 44% rise.

But the annual report also revealed a large rise in the number of murder cases disposed of over the year, from 32 to 48.

Only 15 people were convicted of murder and handed down a life sentence. Others were convicted of manslaughter or were found not guilty by reason of insanity. No persons were acquitted in 2002. The average waiting time for a trial stands at 18 months.

Courts Service chairman Mrs Justice Susan Denham presented the report to the minister. She said the service, established nearly four years ago was now a “dynamic corporation”, citing advances in capital works, regionalisation and provision of information to the public.

She revealed that the service now provides interpreters in 210 dialects and languages and said that the issue of access to courts for disabled people was being tackled.

This includes a wheelchair lift in the country’s largest district court building at Dublin’s Bridewell, a building widely criticised as dilapidated, with bad acoustics and a general air of mayhem.

Nearly 700,000 matters came before the courts last year, including murder and rape cases, nearly 4,000 divorce proceedings, almost 8,000 personal and fatal injury cases and 500 company law hearings.

The vast majority of cases, over 600,000, were dealt with in the district courts. More than two thirds related to criminal matters. Just under 11,000 people were jailed, a drop of over 1,000 on the previous year.