Situation in Georgian Courts Improved

Shorena Kakabadze, Imereti

“Situation is better but not perfect,” Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association evaluated the activities of Criminal Chambers at the Tbilisi and Kutaisi City Courts.

The organization presented the Report on the Monitoring of Criminal Cases at the aforementioned courts, which covered period from January to June of 2013; they monitored randomly selected cases.  

“For the past six months, judges at criminal chamber were more impartial when discussing cases than in the previous period; so we observed some progress in this direction. In comparison to previous years, judges less frequently used imprisonment as preventive measure and bails more often,” young lawyers said.

The monitoring showed progress in passing well-grounded decisions. According to the research, judges at the Tbilisi and Kutaisi Court satisfied less ungrounded solicitations where prosecutors requested imprisonments for the defendants.

As for plea-agreements, that was Achilles Heel of the Georgian judiciary during previous years, it is still problem in the courts. “Number of plea-agreements was not changed (for the past six months). However, we observed significant progress in some other trends. For example, prosecutor’s office rarely requests imprisonment as preventive measure and court also rarely sends defendants to prison. The court mostly uses bail as preventive measure. In parallel to it, judges change the amount of the bail. I mean, if previously courts never changed the solicitations of the prosecutor’s office and satisfied them in all cases, it no longer happens and judges mostly reduce the requested amount of bail. In addition to that, if prosecutor’s office requests imprisonment, court imposes bail,” lawyer of the GYLA and coordinator of the project “Monitoring of Criminal Trials” Tamar Gvaramadze said.

Gvaramadze said it is still problem that Kutaisi and Tbilisi City Courts use only two forms of preventive measure –imprisonment and plea-agreement and never apply to other forms of punishment. “Courts shall enjoy their right to use less grave preventive measures (alternative measures except imprisonment and bail). They shall also request more verification from the prosecutor’s office and impose burden of verification on prosecutors in order to avoid illicit and willful restriction of freedom,” GYLA gave these recommendations to different institutions.

“We observed problems in passing ungrounded judgments too. Although situation in this direction has improved, number of well-grounded judgments was reduced but increased in the section of bail. I think the law shall be amended in order to broaden the authority of the judge to fight against ill-treatment of defendants. Also, it is necessary to allow lawyers to actively continue advocacy activities,” Tamar Gvaramadze said.

Apparently, there are still many gaps in the judiciary practice, including issue of acquitting sentence on the defendant. In the period of January-June of 2013, court acquitted only one defendant from total 84 cases (69 of them finished with plea-agreement).