New recording machines for Supreme Court

This afternoon Attorney General Godfrey Smith handed over to Chief Justice Abdulai Conteh electronic court reporting equipment that should expedite trials in the Supreme Court. The Lanier Advocate V recorders will provide up to six hours of unattended four-channel recording and allow judges to focus on the case instead of taking notes. The Attorney General says the new system, along with simplified court rules should speed up the disposal of cases.

Godfrey Smith, Attorney General

“I can think of several reasons. One it should obviate the need for judges of the Supreme Court to use the old archaic system of longhand taking notes of court proceedings because the electronic court recording systems will provide a complete and one hundred percent accurate recording of the entire court proceedings. Two, normally if the judge is caught up taking notes obviously it means that some of his attention is distracted from focusing on the witness. As you may know quite a bit of the judges’ responsibility is to way the credibility of the witness. So if it’s all being recorded and he doesn’t have to take longhand notes he can concentrate a lot of time on focusing on the witness and reading different behaviour and tendencies of the witness.”

Jacqueline Woods

“Will the systems be only here or will they be distributed countrywide?”

Godfrey Smith

“Well, so far they are only for four of the five courtrooms in Belize City. Based on how it works, obviously it is something we would want to diffuse throughout the entire legal system for the magistrate courts and other courts countrywide.”

The recording system was acquired by the Attorney General’s Ministry at a cost of sixty thousand dollars. Recently trained court stenographers will still be needed, but it is not clear whether they will still be required to be present in the courtroom.