Legal Aid Board Highlights Challenges to Represent all Indigent Accused Persons

The Legal Aid Board has reacted to an online Publication in an online newspaper Sierraloaded in which His Worship Magistrate Hadiru Daboh of the Ross Road Magistrate Court  No. 3 is quoted as saying ‘Legal Aid Board Employees are just Salary Receivers; They are not doing their Job’.

According to the Legal Aid Board, Magistrate Daboh was unhappy with the failure of the Board to represent three accused persons before his court on summary trial.

It further noted that the accused persons have been on remand at the Male Correctional Center in Freetown for three months for committing minor offences or petty crimes.

The Legal Aid Board maintained that Magistrate Daboh  raised an important issue regarding the thousands of unrepresented accused persons in courts.

It continued that as a nation we should engage the issue in a fair and honest manner with a view to finding a solution, if we care about having a justice system that treat everybody equally regardless of their status in society.

The Board has expressed the view that it does not treat the criticism lightly, because it is coming from a former staff of the Legal Aid Board.

More importantly, the Board said it affords it the opportunity to explain to the public to have an informed opinion on how it is going about its work.

The Legal Aid Board revealed that Magistrate Daboh joined the Board in its formative years in 2016 and  was among the second batch of lawyers to join the Board following its inception in May 2015. Magistrate Daboh is said to be credited with contributing to authoring the Paralegal Training Manual and more importantly transforming the Board into the largest legal aid provider. At the time of his leaving in 2019, the Board had twenty-three (23) offices around the country.

The Board revealed how it had celebrated his joining the Bench like it did for Justice Ivan Sesay and Mamakoh Kallon as such  was rooted in the conviction that having staff (who are defence minded) going into the bench will help in some ways in addressing issues of rights of accused persons,  bail, speedy trial and over-crowding in correctional centers.

Magistrate Daboh, the Legal Aid Board continued,  has a unique insight into the challenges of the Board and the efforts which had gone into addressing them and therefore better based to critique the Board.

It stated how Magistrate Daboh knows the most pressing challenge the Board (which is the defence arm of the criminal justice system) has had and continues to grapple with is the number of Lawyers and Paralegals on its staff.

The Board , it was pointed out, had 18 lawyers and 46 Paralegals at the time of his leaving the Board in 2019. The number of lawyers was increased to 24 in 2022 while the number of Paralegals has increased to 71 thanks to the MOTT Foundation and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

It is important to underline, according to the Board that it should have at least one Paralegal in each of the 190 chiefdoms as provided in Section 14 (2) (1) of the Legal Aid Act 2012: ‘The Board shall appoint at least one Paralegal to each chiefdom’.

The picture is quite different in the case of the Board’s counterparts in the Law Officers Department (which is the prosecuting arm of the Criminal Justice System) who are better resourced with 72State Counsels. The Department recruited 31 State Counsels in 2020. The State Counsels are ably assisted by Police Officers who prosecute matters at the Magisterial level.

The Judiciary also increased the number on the Bench in 2020. This development saw for the first in the history of Sierra Leone each district having at least one Resident Magistrate. Also, Resident Judges were deployed in four districts which never had one. The difference in staff strength (Lawyers/Judges) between the Judiciary and Law Officers Department on one hand and the Legal Aid Board is an open secret. This state of affairs raises questions relating to equality before the law for complainants/Plaintiff on the one hand and defendants on the other.

It is for this reason the Board had prioritize High Court cases over Magistrate Cases since its founding. Even in the High Courts the Board gives topmost priority to indigent remand inmates. The cases for which legal representation are provided in the Magistrate Court are limited mostly to Child and Spousal Maintenance cases. Both current and former counsels  of the Board including Magistrate Daboh are aware of this.

The Board is in no illusion about the enormity of work regarding providing free legal representation to all the thousands of indigent persons before the courts in the country. This is why the Board has been grappling with overcrowding of our correctional centers.  Despite the best efforts of the Board, the prison population has continued to increase.

This is why the Board had launched an initiative since May 2015 geared towards decongesting the correctional centers through a combination of actions: calling on Magistrates to scrupulously apply the bail and sentencing Guideline which is the panacea to the overcrowding in  prisons; conducting frequent visits to Corrections Centers to identify inmates without indictments and work with the law officers to secure their indictments; ensuring those on remand but not on trial are put on trial; identifying those who are over-sentenced and apply for a judicial review of their sentences, ensuring those on judgement reserve have them delivered; mediating community level disputes and minor criminal matters (some referred to it by the courts) which would otherwise be taken to the police and possibly sent to jail and organizing community outreach around the country to educate people since those who are educated on laws are less prone to committing crime out of ignorance.

The Board had carried the criminal calendar with only 18 and now with 24 lawyers (including the Executive Director and Mr. Francis Gabiddon) by virtue of the fact that it represents most indigent accused persons brought before the Courts at both Magistrate  and High Court Levels. The Legal Aid Counsels provided legal advice and legal representation to18,752 indigent persons in 2022. This means each of the 22 Legal Aid Counsels, provided legal advice and legal representation to an average of 852.4 indigent persons in 2022.

Beneficiaries include indigent accused persons represented in all Criminal Sessions/Call-Over and Special Criminal Sessions in 2022. This resulted in almost 100% representation of indigent accused persons in these sessions. It also contributed in reducing the correctional center population. For instance, the Board provided legal representation to all the 870 accused persons in the Judicial Week (31 January to 4 February 2022). The Board secured the discharge of 234 accused persons and bail for 374during the week.

The Board absolutely agrees with Daboh regarding the increasing number of unrepresented indigent accused persons in the courts and by extension the steady increase in prison and remand inmates around the country but to blame the Board with 24 lawyers for this is unfair. Magistrate Daboh is aware that as Legal Aid Counsel he used to represent far more clients than any private lawyer. He knows the situation has not changed to date.

We (Legal Aid Board, Judiciary, Law Officer Department and the Ministry of Justice) have a role to play in addressing this challenge which borders on equality before the law. A starting point would be to bring the number of lawyers with the Board at par with its counterpart State Counsels with the Law Officers Department and also allow our Paralegals to defend indigent clients at Magisterial level. If this means introducing a new legislation, why not?

Secondly, the Board is calling on the Magistrates to scrupulously implement the Bail and Sentencing Guidelines. That they believe will bring to an end a situation where an accused is sentenced to two years six months for stealing eight bottles of stout from the Sierra Leone Brewery Limited Company. The good news is the Legal Aid Board will be applying for judicial review of this sentence.