UPDATE: adds reaction from legal advocacy group GYLA, criticizing the PM and prosecutor’s office
The jury trial system has suffered “a complete failure” in Georgia and should be “revised”, PM Irakli Garibashvili said on June 8.
The PM’s remarks come amid debates on the issue that were triggered after the jury in a murder trial failed to reach a verdict after 13 hours of deliberation on June 5. The case is the murder of a young man, Lasha Makharadze, who was shot down in downtown Tbilisi Vake neighborhood on September 1, 2014. The man accused of murder will now face a new trial before a different jury. The family of the victim, however, has launched a campaign against the jury trial system and demanded the case to be tried by a judge.
“Of course it is appalling for me that trial of a person accused of murder has failed. This is utterly appalling. We have seen that this institution – jury trial – has suffered a complete collapse and complete failure. We are obliged to revise it and to rectify shortcomings,” PM Garibashvili told journalists on June 8 without elaborating specifics of what he implies by revision of the system. “The family of the victim has a fair demand to punish a criminal and the state should secure it. How it will be done – relevant agencies will do it.”
Jury trials are established in the Constitution and a lengthy and complicated process of procedures will be required to change it.
Under the law jury trials have only limited application, covering only a few crime categories, among them – aggravated murder. Jury trials are only applied if cases are heard by Tbilisi and Kutaisi city courts.
So far jury trials were held in total of 10 cases, since the system was introduced in 2010. In all, but the recent one, jurors reached verdict.
The man accused of Lasha Makharadze’s murder is in a pre-trial detention since he was arrested on September 10, 2014. The accused man was detained in breakaway South Ossetia and then handed over to the Georgian authorities.
The nine-month limit on pre-trial detention will expire this month and after that he has to be released from confinement.
But after the remarks by the PM’s on June 8, the Prosecutor’s Office said that it brought new charges against the man and will seek to renew pre-trial detention.
The new charges are not related to Makharadze’s murder and involve accusations of giving “false” testimony while in pre-trial detention. The Prosecutor’s Office claims that the man “falsely” accused a prison guard of physical assault against him. If the court orders pre-trial detention with the new charges, the man will not be able to leave jail this month even though his nine-month pre-trial detention limit for charges related to Makharadze’s murder expires.
Legal advocacy and rights watchdog group, Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA), has slammed PM Garibashvili’s remarks as violation of presumption of innocence against the accused man.
The group also said that the move by prosecutor’s office to bring new charges, just after the PM’s remarks, triggers “serious questions” about independence of the prosecutor’s office.
GYLA has also said that new charges against the man appear to be prosecutor’s attempt to keep him behind the bars.
The group has also warned that filing criminal charges in connection to allegations voiced by detainee over alleged mistreatment by prison guard represents a “dangerous precedent.”
“We understand very difficult and sensitive context accompanying this case involving murder of a young man, but this context should not become a reason for a dangerous precedent of violating the fundamental rights of an accused man. It will endanger not only the rights of this accused person, but also the protection of human rights in general,” GYLA said.
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