A Ministerial Report Reveals The Defects Of The Criminal Court In Algeria

Justice Ministry of Justice revealed the completion of the first draft of the Criminal Court reform project, as the workforce assigned to this task deposited its report at the end of last September.

The Ministry stated on its official website that this report, which was prepared by the working team that is formed of Supreme Court judges, deals with the various problems raised in the issue of reforming the Criminal Court, as it ended with the proposal of a draft amendment of the legal provisions related to this judicial body.

Given the importance of this issue, the Minister of Justice ordered to expand consultation to all judicial authorities, the Supreme Court and the State Council, in addition to the National Federation of Lawyers’ Organizations, University Professors and Specialists in Judicial and Legal Affairs, to contribute to enriching the final version of this amendment.

The aforementioned report presents, with a comparative study, the various experiences adopted by other countries in this field, and a set of proposed amendments related to the composition and jurisdiction of the Criminal Court and the holding of its sessions.

The same report assesses the Algerian experience in adopting the jury system in criminal matters while monitoring its negative and positive aspects.

In this context, the authors of the proposals believe that “given the negative aspects of the jury system, it becomes clear that the professional judges’ system is the most appropriate model in the Algerian criminal legal system.” Therefore, “the popular jury system must be completely abandoned and the professional triad composition should be preserved”.

Among the negative aspects upon which the authors of the report relied is the fact that the juror, meaning the “popular judge” lacks adequate knowledge of procedural and substantive law, especially in private cases such as those generated by the use of technology.

Besides, the juror is his personal conviction, and in many cases, derived from information obtained outside the court session, and is also vulnerable to the rapid influence of what the media or rumours promote, which “contradicts the principle of the right to an independent and impartial court that is enshrined constitutionally and in international conventions”.

On the same curve, another reason arises related to the difference in opinions of jurors according to their culture, in addition to the possibility that some of them tend to rush to make decisions, especially in cases that take a long time, which may cause the juror to lose control of the proceedings of the trial.

This proposal also aims to reduce the additional financing from the financial charges of the criminal justice system, noting that “the value of expenditures consumed during the criminal sessions of the criminal courts of the first instance and appeals amounted to more than 52 billion centimes during 2019”, according to the same report.

Among the other reasons on which the report relied in this regard is the fact that the jury system “has no historical reference”, because customary practices only know the term conciliation or self-reform, which is “far from passing judgment”, in addition to the fact that the jury system “is not based on any religious legitimacy” because “Islamic law is strict about that, as the task of the judicial authorities is limited to those who meet the proven scientific conditions”, according to the opinion of the proposers.

In light of the foregoing explanations, this point in turn leads to the proposal to delete the third paragraph of Article 258 of the Code of Criminal Procedure related to the formation of the Criminal Court of First Instance and the Criminal Court of Appeal when adjudicating the crimes related to terrorism, drugs and smuggling.

In this context, the report refers to several “deficiencies” in the work of these judicial bodies in their current formation, which sometimes resulted in a “conflict” that the Supreme Court stood on in several criminal rulings issued by various judicial authorities, including the issuance of two judgments in one procedural file, the first relates to common law crimes, and the second to special crimes, although the two bodies are formed of the same professional judges.

Given that the Algerian criminal legislator adopts the principle of litigation in two ranks, it is necessary to “make the composition of each degree different from the other in terms of ranks”, while preserving the tripartite composition, as a result of the small number of advisory judges, and a guarantee for judges to devote themselves to their regular duties to ensure the good functioning to the judicial body”.