The ending of the criminal assizes last week may be the High Court’s final official closing, as Justice Nicola Byer announced that cases will run continuously next year instead of being broken up into three separate sessions.
“There will no longer be an opening and closing of the assizes,” she said. “We’ll just be running and jumping into trials.”
The change comes at a time when a list of cases is overloading the court, in part because no new trials were completed in the October Assizes. The two trials that were completed — Andre Penn for sex crimes against a minor, and Jevon Demming and Sherman Williams for attempted murder — were both re-trials.
The High Court is scheduled to open on Monday, Jan. 12, and Messrs. Penn, Demming and Williams are scheduled to be sentenced that week.
See the Dec. 18, 2014 edition for full coverage.
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