ASTRATEGY wily lawyers resort to in their craft is to seek postponements to proceedings to buy time away from the dock for their clients facing criminal charges.
We see it all the time. Submissions to delay proceedings for a variety of reasons, with the underlying intention being to throw off the prosecution. The goal is to muddy the bearings so that defendants may get a discharge, either by a mistrial, technicality or acquittal, as a means to neuter incriminating evidence. Or it could be a political strategy.
Lawyers often fall back on a well-placed application to delay proceedings if conditions fit any of these categories: defendants needing psychiatric evaluation to assess their mental fitness to stand trial or applications to change the trial venue allegedly to ensure a fair hearing.
Of late, however, we have been seeing a sudden increase in applications to stand down trials allegedly due to the magical appearance of new evidence that has presented itself despite months or years of ongoing court proceedings.
The last category haunts the courts. Of course, granting a postponement is discretionary as a judge can disregard pleas to defer a trial even if the grounds are compelling. A judge will rule that justice must be meted out swiftly.
A high-profile trial delayed, especially if postponements are too regular, would look bad for justice. However, there seems to be a trend now, with the accused applying for a review of charges against them and pleas for the Attorney-General's Chambers to consider new developments that the defendant's lawyer argues had arrived out-of-the-blue. Of course, nobody can deny that it is the right of the accused to file such an application.
However, one must point out how peculiarly convenient it all sounds, considering many such cases have plodded along smoothly with all the evidence laid bare all this while. It is only natural that such sudden representations are being viewed sceptically. The attorney-general must offer accountability and transparency if he unexpectedly decides to drop charges in such cases.
Postponements in some high-profile cases were so routine that cases had dragged on frustratingly for years. A jurist no less than former chief justice Tun Zaki Azmi was dead set against bewildering delays in proceedings: he urged judges to disallow delaying tactics through frivolous applications. Zaki proposed that the Federal Court make a ruling that ongoing trials can't be held back because of lawyers' "interlocutory applications". We agree.
This loophole must be plugged, especially if it is capitalised as a cynical means to escape judgment. If all else fails, there is also another means which desperate defendants resort to — applying for a presiding judge to recuse himself over accusations of perceived bias or out-of-court impropriety.
It fails in most cases: judges are too wary of this devious tactic, but it's still deemed offensive to the judiciary.