According to the Judiciary spokesman, the trial of murder cases had always been expensive because of the jury system used before and noted that the abolishment of the jury system would reduce the operational costs incurred in proceedings with murder cases.
Under the Jury system, 12 to 14 people were being appointed to pursue the cases and they had to be paid. Murder trials take place where the cases were committed and travel expenses lead to murder trials being exorbitant, said Chigona.
The Judiciary relied on donors such as the Britishs Department for International Development (DfID) and the European Union in funding homicide cases.
However, Chigona who also serves as Assistant Registrar for the High Court disclosed that Malawi government has now started taking the responsibility of funding all sectors involved in murder trials.
A fair assessment can be done this year on whether the abolition of the jury system will help to reduce the number of murder suspects in our prisons using the funds that have been made available to us, said Chigona.
The countrys Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) Wezi Kayira (pictured) is on record saying that apart from the expenses, at times the jury did not understand the proceedings and where they were supposed to pass a verdict of guilty, they came up with not guilty.
Malawi has about 750 suspects waiting for hearing of their murder cases. The top prosecutor said the target for the state is to try 500 cases this year.
Senior Legal Aid Advocate Peter Chisama disclosed that government has improved the financial allocation which he said will speed up administration of justice to remandees awaiting murder trials.
The financial allocation to the Legal Aid Department in all the regions to help us carry murder trials is pegged at K21, 208, 475, said Chisama.
He said the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs initiated a homicide taskforce that has been there for more than two years to see on how the backlog of homicide cases could be reduced.
Chisama explained that the taskforce composed of the Prison Commission, the Police Service Commission, the Judiciary, the Legal Aid Department and the Ministry of Health because they conduct postmortems and autopsies for dead bodies.
At first, we were mostly relying on donor support to have homicide trials conducted but the taskforce agreed to lobby for government to increase the funding. It was also agreed that homicide cases should be done using government resources because donor funding was erratic and that it is the duty of government to try its own people, he said.
. It is mandatory that any person, a defendant or plaintiff must have proper representation in court because it is a serious case. I have handled such cases myself and the experience is that most people committing such crimes have insufficient means to enable them have a lawyer. However, we do not bar anybody from hiring a lawyer, explained Chisama.
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