Salim Bashir added that Covid-19 was here to stay and the legal fraternity must revise its strategy to ensure the wheels of justice ran smoothly.
“We have to accept that the disease will exist under an endemic situation and we have to move on with our lives,” he told FMT.
As such, he said, lawyers who had to attend criminal trials and appeals should be inoculated soon with two doses of vaccines to ensure they were not absent from courts.
Salim said this in response to a criminal appeal in the Court of Appeal that had to be vacated as a lawyer in the case had come in close contact with a Covid-19 patient.
Over the last three weeks, a number of appeals in the Federal Court and Court of Appeal did not proceed after the appellants, still in prison, did not pass their swab tests.
Chief Justice Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat had earlier this month issued a fresh circular advising that open court hearings for criminal appeals would resume but subject to strict adherence to SOP rules.
FMT understands that deputy public prosecutors, judges and frontline court staff have been vaccinated.
Salim, who is also a criminal law practitioner, said appeals, especially those involving the death sentence, needed to be disposed of quickly as the liberty of the person was involved. He said all prisons in the country should also be equipped with facilities to conduct virtual hearings so that appeals could go on uninterrupted.
“It is unfair to postpone cases of prisoners who were appealing against their conviction and sentence,” he said.
Lawyer Jeyaseelen Anthony said his court-assigned appeal case involving an Iranian on July 6 was postponed for unknown reasons.
“I believe the case was adjourned as the court wanted to take precautions so that no inmate would spread the virus,” he said.
Anthony said his client, who has been convicted for trafficking in drugs, had been languishing in prison since 2012.
“I am helpless but I also understand the predicament of the authorities, especially the court administrators who want to see appeals disposed of quickly to bring certainty to the appellants,” he said.
Lawyer Muhammad Rafique Rashid Ali, who is the co-chair of the Malaysian Bar law committee, said he had been monitoring the situation since early this month.
He said the Bar was mulling proposals to conduct trials and appeals online but they were still at an early stage.
“Nothing has been finalised yet but we are talking to the court administrators and those in the attorney-general’s chambers,” he said.
Rafique said the Bar was well aware that slow disposal of cases would result in a backlog.
“In capital punishment cases, judges will have to write their grounds as soon as possible but this may be hampered if they have too many cases before them,” he said.
Rafique said a balance had to be found between the right of the accused to have quick access to justice and the courts’ ability to cope up with the current grim situation.
He said the livelihood of lawyers and their employees would also be at stake if criminal proceedings were interrupted due to the spike in Covid-19 cases. Criminal trials and appeals have been intermittently disrupted since March last year when the government first imposed a nationwide lockdown.