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Giorgi Tugushi: “Essential Problems Still Remain in Judiciary System”

November 22, 2011

Mariam Khurtsidze

On November 16, Heinrich Boell Foundation South Caucasus Office in Tbilisi hosted discussion “Administration of Justice and Protection of Human Rights in the Justice System in Georgia”. During the discussion Public Defender of Georgia Giorgi Tugushi spoke about administration of justice and human rights violations in this field.

“One of the main fields of the activities of the Public Defender and his office is evaluation of the justice system as well as protection of human rights in this field. Right to fair trial is one of the fundamental rights, which is essentially important for every person particularly for those who have direct contact with the justice system.

The Public Defender has frequently criticized the judiciary system in many views. One of the toughest topics of the Public Defender’s report is about right to fair trial. It is not only very difficult to write about it which requires intensive work, it is very important issue (due to specific of the judiciary) and the Public Defender shall properly define how far his research and evaluations should go.

The Public Defender acts in accordance to the Organic Law of Georgia about Public Defender of Georgia whose article 14 lists main competences of the Ombudsman including the competence in regard with the court. 

Before, there was a paragraph in the Law on the Public Defender of Georgia which stated that if an ombudsman, when studying the court judgments, concludes that right to fair trial was breached, the Public Defender shall appeal to the court and request to reconsider the particular judgment. However, it should have been done in a form of recommendation and the Court shall either accepts or decline it.

However, later the institute of reconsidering the judgment was cancelled by the law. The judgment of the Supreme Court of Georgia is final and issue of its lawfulness shall not be reconsidered. Thus, in fact, the Article lost its essence and importance. 

Even my predecessor attempted to draw public attention to this article several times and petitioned to the court too. The reply was always one and the same – our legislation does not recognize this mechanism any longer and consequently the court judgment will not be reconsidered.

Afterwards, some amendments were introduced to the Law on the Public Defender of Georgia. The Public Defender can introduce court with its opinion about any particular case. The Public Defender has only competence of evaluation. He can study various court judgments and assess how human rights were protected during judicial proceeding. However, the court judgment will not be changed based on those assessments regardless it is strictly critical or not.

Recent reports of the Public Defender (particularly the one of the second half of 2009), were mostly focused on the right to fair trial and analyze of various criminal law and administrative cases.
 
The Public Defender concluded that despite implemented reforms and several successful projects, essential problems still remain in the judiciary system. First of all, the problem is ungrounded interim and final judgments as well as violation of equality principle. In our last report we spoke about appointing judges from the capital in various districts. We assumed that the authority uses the mechanism for the punishment of judges.

In 2011, having studied several criminal cases we concluded that judges blatantly violated human rights. We petitioned to the Supreme Council of Justice and requested to impose disciplinary liability on those judges. 

In reply to our petition, all eleven envelopes were returned to our office. This procedure is confidential and we are not authorized to publish the names of judges and information about correspondence with the Supreme Council of Justice. Those envelopes usually have large stamps of Top Secret on it. However, I read them and update my colleagues with the information who work on those cases.

Reportedly, the Supreme Court of Justice started disciplinary proceedings on all eleven cases but later dropped on ten of them and recommendation (even not warning) was given to the judge in the eleventh case.

Disciplinary liability cannot be requested because of a simple motive. A blatant violation of the law shall be observed which significantly damaged the accused. We observed many facts. I doubt the number of similar cases is higher because not every case is sent to the Public Defender’s Office.

Ungrounded judgments are still serious problem as well as declination of solicitations. There are concrete problems in the protection of defense rights as well as in administrative proceedings. Now, we intend to jointly analyze the judgments passed on administrative cases after May 26 part of which ended with imprisonment or with imposing fines.

Consequently, in our next report we will review this procedure completely which will be studied by the Public Defender in regard with the administrative court.”

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